DECRYPTION – American scientists have detected in patients suffering from the disease two abnormalities in the functioning of their neurons which could explain part of their symptoms.
Two anomalies in the functioning of neurons have been detected in schizophrenic patients by American researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. They could even explain the most frequent symptoms of this very debilitating mental illness, the authors claim in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Sciences (The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – PNAS). «This study opens new perspectives to better understand the cellular origin of schizophrenianotes Anne Giersch, researcher at the Strasbourg University Hospital, but it remains to be proven that these abnormalities are indeed the cause of the clinical symptoms observed in patients».
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Research on the physiological basis of schizophrenia was hampered by the absence of an equivalent of the disease in animals and by the difficulty of studying neurons from patients, most often obtained after their death. A new technique, developed in 2007 by the Japanese…
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