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Scientists Pinpoint Genetic Mechanism Linking Brain Chemical to Schizophrenia

Brain Activity Excited Nerve Cells Illustration

Researchers have recognized how the mind chemical dopamine pertains to schizophrenia.

Researchers analyzing autopsy brains affirm a long-held speculation  explaining neurotransmitter’s connection to a debilitating dysfunction.

How does the mind chemical dopamine relate to schizophrenia? It’s a query that vexed scientists for greater than 70 years, and now researchers on the Lieber Institute for Mind Improvement (LIBD) consider they’ve solved the difficult riddle. This new understanding might result in higher therapy of schizophrenia, an often-devastating mind dysfunction characterised by delusional considering, hallucinations, and different types of psychosis.  

Via their exploration of the expression of genes within the caudate nucleus – a area of the mind linked to emotional decision-making – the scientists uncovered bodily proof that neuronal cells are unable to exactly management ranges of dopamine. Additionally they recognized the genetic mechanism that controls dopamine move. Their findings have been printed at the moment (November 1) within the journal Nature Neuroscience.

In keeping with the World Well being Group (WHO), roughly 1 in 300 folks worldwide suffers from schizophrenia, which works out to round 24 million folks. This fee climbs to 1 in 222 folks if solely adults are thought-about.

“Till now, scientists have been unable to decipher whether or not the dopamine hyperlink was a causative issue or solely a strategy to deal with schizophrenia,” mentioned Daniel R. Weinberger, M.D., a co-author of the research. “We have now the primary proof that dopamine is a causative think about schizophrenia.” Weinberger is chief govt and director of the Lieber Institute.

Dopamine, a sort of neurotransmitter, acts as a chemical messenger that sends alerts between neurons – nerve cells within the mind – to vary their exercise and habits. Dopamine is the reward neurotransmitter that permits folks to really feel pleasure. 

In keeping with the Nationwide Institute of Psychological Well being, schizophrenia is 1 of the highest 15 main causes of incapacity worldwide. Individuals with the affliction endure from psychotic signs akin to hallucinations, delusions, and disordered considering, in addition to diminished expression of feelings, diminished motivation to perform targets, problem in social relationships, motor impairment, and cognitive impairment. Signs sometimes start in late adolescence or early maturity, though cognitive impairment and weird behaviors typically seem in childhood. Present therapies for schizophrenia embody antipsychotic medicine which handle the signs of pyschosis, however not the trigger. 

“One of many main unwanted effects of the medicine used to deal with schizophrenia is lack of delight and pleasure,” mentioned Dr. Jennifer Erwin, an investigator on the Institute and one of many authors on the report. “In concept, if we might goal the dopamine receptor particularly with medicine, that may very well be a brand new technique for therapy that will not restrict a affected person’s pleasure as a lot.” 

Scientists have recognized for many years that irregular ranges of dopamine have some connection to psychosis and are a crucial think about schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, and other neuropsychiatric disorders. Drugs that increase dopamine in the brain, such as amphetamines, are known to cause psychosis. Drugs that treat psychosis do so by reducing dopamine activity.

These observations have inspired generations of scientists to try to understand whether – and how – an imbalance of dopamine actually relates to schizophrenia. Dopamine transmits information in the brain by interacting with proteins on the surface of brain cells, called dopamine receptors. By studying those receptors, scientists at the Lieber Institute have come up with novel evidence confirming that dopamine is a causative factor for schizophrenia. 

The investigators examined hundreds of post-mortem specimen brains donated to the Lieber Institute from over 350 individuals, some with schizophrenia and others without psychiatric illness. They chose to focus on the caudate nucleus, a part of the brain that is critically important for learning how to make complex ideas and behaviors more automatic and intuitive, but also because it has the brain’s richest supply of dopamine. They also studied a region of the human genome that large international genetic studies have identified as being connected with the risk of schizophrenia. This region contains the genes for the protein receptors that respond to dopamine, which points to the dopamine-schizophrenia connection. But while genetic data suggest at most a role of dopamine receptors at risk for schizophrenia, the data are not conclusive and do not identify what the relationship actually is. The investigators at the Lieber Institute went critically further in discovering the mechanisms that make dopamine receptors a risk factor.

The mechanism exists specifically in a subtype of the dopamine receptor, called the autoreceptor, which lies on the “male” side of the connection between neurons, the presynaptic terminal. This autoreceptor regulates how much dopamine is released from the presynaptic neuron. If autoreceptors are compromised, the flow of dopamine within the brain is poorly controlled, and too much dopamine flows for too long.

The investigators found that decreased expression of this autoreceptor in the brain explains the genetic evidence of risk for illness. This is consistent with the prevailing hypothesis that too much dopamine plays a role in psychosis, and strong evidence that the dopamine-schizophrenia riddle has at last been solved.  

The pioneering neuroscientist Dr. Sol Snyder hailed the study as a breakthrough many decades in the making. Dr. Snyder is a distinguished service professor of neuroscience, pharmacology, and psychiatry and founder of the Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, which bears his name. He was the scientist who discovered that antipsychotic drugs work by reducing brain dopamine.

“There’s lots of muddled data indicating the relevance of dopamine and dopamine receptors in schizophrenia,” said Dr. Snyder, who was not involved in this research project. “The key thing these researchers have done is to collect data that puts it all together and in a fashion that is persuasive in establishing that dopamine systems are out of kilter in schizophrenia, and that is causal to the disease.” 

“For decades, people have debated the dopamine connection to schizophrenia,” Dr. Snyder said. “They used to say, ‘Well, this is interesting to speculate about, but there’s no solid evidence.’ But now that we have much more rigorous data available, we keep coming back to the same story. You don’t have to call it a hypothesis anymore.” 

Reference: “Analysis of the caudate nucleus transcriptome in individuals with schizophrenia highlights effects of antipsychotics and new risk genes” 1 November 2022, Nature Neuroscience.
DOI: 10.1038/s41593-022-01182-7



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