Surprisingly little is known about schizophrenia. It was only recognized as a medical condition in the past few decades, and its exact causes remain unclear. Since there is no objective test for schizophrenia, its diagnosis is based on an assortment of reported symptoms.
The standard treatment, antipsychotic medication, works less than half the time and becomes increasingly ineffective over time.
Now, Prof. Illana Gozes — the Lily and Avraham Gildor Chair for the Investigation of Growth Factors, the director of the Adams Super Center for Brain Studies at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, and a member of the Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel Aviv University — has discovered that an important cell-maintenance process called autophagy is reduced in the brains of schizophrenic patients. The findings, published in Nature’s Molecular Psychiatry, advance the understanding of schizophrenia and could enable the development of new diagnostic tests and drug treatments for the disease.
“We discovered a new pathway that plays a part in schizophrenia,” said Prof. Gozes. “By identifying and targeting the proteins known to be involved in the pathway, we may be able to diagnose and treat the disease in new and more effective ways.”
Graduate students Avia Merenlender-Wagner, Anna Malishkevich, and Zeev Shemer of TAU, Prof. Brian Dean and colleagues of the University of Melbourne, and Prof. Galila Agam and Joseph Levine of Ben Gurion University of the Negev and Beer Sheva’s Psychiatry Research Center and Mental Health Center collaborated on the research.
Source: American Friends of Tel Aviv University, USA