Schizophrenic Brain Abnormalities Detected Early
Researchers in England recently identified differences in brain structure that they think may help create a screening procedure for schizophrenia. As reported in the November issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, they studied a group of individuals in their first break of schizophrenia, schizophreniform disorder, and schizoaffective disorder. The researchers performed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on the group, and on a control group of healthy subjects with similar ethnicity, socioeconomic background, and ages.
Previous research has shown that patients at later stages of the diseases had a different brain structure, as evidenced in MRIs, but this study was looking at patients in the very early stages of the diseases. What they found was that the patients diagnosed with mental illnesses had "deficits in cortical gray matter, temporal lobe gray matter, and whole brain volume as well as significant enlargement of the lateral and third ventricles."
They did not find any link between brain structure and the nature of symptoms. The reason, according to the researchers, may be that the measurements they took might not have been detailed enough to show what differences in structure are involved with symptoms; another explanation might be that the cause of the symptoms has more to do with the functioning, rather that the structure of the brain.
About half of the patients had an average of four and a half weeks of treatment, while the other half were "medically naïve." The different brain structure was present in both groups of patients. This means that those differences are present from the outset of the disease, and could possibly be used to screen patients and get a diagnosis much faster than the current methods. This, in turn, would enable a patient to get the correct medication and/or treatment much faster.
Imagine doctors diagnosing patients with psychotic brain disorders and treating them even before patients become sick with their psychotic mental illnesses. Patients could be treated with medications early and never have to suffer their first psychotic break. Patients would never have to lose touch with reality or suffer or make their families and friends suffer. This study also indicates that these differences in brain structure are not caused by medication, as some have theorized.
One of the researchers, Dr. Tonmoy Sharma, is quoted in the New York Post as saying that this study may help in the crusade to "prevent the eruption of psychosis…." To this end, they "are focusing on the prodrome phase, one of the earliest stages of the disease before psychosis is apparent." Doctors may now have a method of screening for these disorders, much like cancer or heart disease. As Dr. Sharma put it, "With a suitable schizophrenia screening method, for the first time, preventive psychiatry becomes a realistic possibility."