Schizophrenia is one of the most critical diseases in the world. As per a scientific estimate, there are about 4 cases of these patients in around 1000 people. Moreover, this disease has equal instances of occurrence in males and females. This emphasizes the severity of the disease. However, the key issue is, there is no proper diagnosis technique for this disease. A latest research might change the way schizophrenia patients are treated.
Making Personalized Treatment Possible
Scientists from the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences stated that they were successful in developing a new imaging biomarker. The specialty of this marker is it holds an ability to assist in offering tailored medicine options for psychiatric disarrays. Prof. Jiang Tianzi and Prof. Liu Bing are key contributors of this research. Moreover, the study is available for access in the journal Nature Medicine.
In this research, scientists proved that nonstandard striatal function could be used as a potential biomarker in schizophrenia diagnosis. Moreover, it can also help in determining response of the treatment offered to schizophrenia patients. In this study, researchers used multimodal neuroimaging data. This data was gathered from around 1100 schizophrenia patients and healthy controls from 2010–2015. It helped researchers to propose the concept of “functional striatal abnormalities.” Further, with the help of artificial intelligence technology, the research mapped striatal abnormalities at a distinct level.
Through this study, scientists demonstrated that striatal dysfunction was effectual to distinguish patients with schizophrenia. At the same time, they also proved that such abnormalities were the key reason for inferior antipsychotic response. Following study of diverse levels of data, scientists highlighted that striatal dysfunction is associated with dopaminergic system and polygenic genetic schizophrenia threat.