Adding the dietary supplements folate and vitamin B12 to treatment with antipsychotic medication improved a core symptom component of schizophrenia in a study of more than 100 patients. The study focused on negative symptoms of schizophrenia — which include apathy, social withdrawal, and a lack of emotional expressiveness. While the level of improvement across all participants was modest, results were more significant in individuals carrying specific variants in genes involved with folate metabolism. The report from a team based at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) will appear in the journal JAMA Psychiatry(formerly Archives of General Psychiatry) and has been issued online.
"The symptoms of schizophrenia are complex, and antipsychotic medications provide no relief for some of the most disabling parts of the illness. These include negative symptoms, which can be particularly devastating," says Joshua Roffman, MD, MMSc, of the MGH Department of Psychiatry, corresponding author of the JAMA Psychiatry paper. "Our finding that folate plus vitamin B12 supplementation can improve negative symptoms opens a new potential avenue for treatment of schizophrenia. Because treatment effects differed based on which genetic variants were present in each participant, the results also support a personalized medical approach to treating schizophrenia."
Full story of B12 reducing schizophrenia symptoms at Science Daily
Photos courtesy of and copyright PhotoPin, http://photopin.com/
Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education
A new study from Lund University in Sweden shows that the average life expectancy of men and women with schizophrenia is 15 years and 12 years shorter respectively than for those who do not suffer from the disease. The study has been carried out in collaboration with Stanford University in the US.
The reasons why people with schizophrenia have a shorter life expectancy have previously been unknown, but have been much discussed in recent years. The research report that has now been published shows that individuals with schizophrenia are more likely to die of two major diseases.
The study followed over six million individuals from 2003 to 2009, of whom 8 277 had schizophrenia, by analyzing the Swedish population and health registers.
The results show that people with schizophrenia had contact with the health service over twice as often as people without the condition, but they were no more likely to be diagnosed with cardiovascular disease or cancer.
Full story of individuals with schizophrenia at Science Daily
Photos courtesy of and copyright PhotoPin, http://photopin.com/
Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education
Babies born to women with sensitivity to gluten appear to be at increased risk for certain psychiatric disorders later in life, according to research by scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore.
The team’s findings, published ahead of print on April 25 in The American Journal of Psychiatry, add to a growing body of evidence that many "adult" diseases may take root before and shortly after birth.
"Lifestyle and genes are not the only factors that shape disease risk, and factors and exposures before, during and after birth can help pre-program much of our adult health," said investigator Robert Yolken, M.D., a neuro-virologist at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. "Our study is an illustrative example suggesting that a dietary sensitivity before birth could be a catalyst in the development of schizophrenia or a similar condition 25 years later."
Full story of schizophrenia risk in children at Science Daily
Photos courtesy of and copyright stock.xchng, http://www.sxc.hu/
In a new study, researchers at Karolinska Institutet have identified epigenetic changes — known as DNA methylation — in the blood of patients with schizophrenia. The researchers were also able to detect differences depending on how old the patients were when they developed the disease and whether they had been treated with various drugs. In the future this new knowledge may be used to develop a simple test to diagnose patients with schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia is one of our most common chronic psychiatric diseases and affects 1% of the population. It is already known that the risk of developing schizophrenia increases if one has close family members who have had the disease. At the same time, studies on identical twins, who therefore have the same genetic make-up, show that 50% of the disease risk can be explained by genetic factors. This in turn suggests that environmental factors, which include epigenetic changes to the genome, account for the remaining 50% of the cause of the disease.
Full story on blood and schizophrenia at Science Daily
By Traci Pedersen
There is a serious lack of new drug treatments for mental health disorders, such as depression and schizophrenia, say leading international academics, who are currently advocating for new approaches to drug development for mental health disorders.
Although nearly 40 percent of the population is affected by mental health issues, which includes everything from depression and dementia to anxiety and schizophrenia, researchers say there is still a crisis in the development of new treatments.
“The pharmaceutical industry has in part withdrawn, either because they struggled to translate research into a viable drug or because of financial pressures. Although some have remained, there are still insufficient resources being focused on diseases which affect a disproportionate percentage of the population,” said Professor Barbara Sahakian, of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge.
Full story of drug treatments at PsychCentral
Adding the dietary supplements folate and vitamin B12 to treatment with antipsychotic medication improved a core symptom component of schizophrenia in a study of more than 100 patients. The study focused on negative symptoms of schizophrenia — which include apathy, social withdrawal, and a lack of emotional expressiveness. While the level of improvement across all participants was modest, results were more significant in individuals carrying specific variants in genes involved with folate metabolism. The report from a team based at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) will appear in the journal JAMA Psychiatry(formerly Archives of General Psychiatry) and has been issued online.
