A physiological abnormality that is present in one-third of patients - and is virtually absent in other psychiatric illnesses - is worthy of better understanding," he added.ĭr. "We do not believe that all patients have phospholipid metabolism abnormalities, but understanding pathogenesis in even a subgroup of patients will be an important advance. Yao explained that these findings, if validated, may lead to a lab test to help discern between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, may help identify people at risk of developing psychosis, and may result in new treatments. The identified schizophrenia-subtype may also be valuable in early specific treatment," he added.ĭr.
Schizophrenia recovery success stories skin#
"Quantitative measuring (of) niacin-induced skin flush by a laser Doppler flowmeter is noninvasive, which could lead to improved diagnosis for early detection of the illness. "Therefore, an abnormal niacin response suggests that arachidonic acid-derived signals are disrupted in the niacin-subsensitive subtype of schizophrenia." "The niacin skin flush response is mediated by chemical messengers derived from arachidonic acid stored in the phospholipids of cellular membranes," he said. Niacin sensitivity may be a viable method to subtype the schizophrenias," Dr.
It is important to discover physiologically distinct subtypes of schizophrenia. In fact, the variable therapeutic response to antipsychotic medication provides strong evidence against a unitary cause of schizophrenia. "It is extremely unlikely that schizophrenia arises from a single cause. The NRA predicted schizophrenia with 31% sensitivity and 97% specificity.Īge, gender, race, or cigarette smoking did not influence the NRA, the authors reported online September 14 in Schizophrenia Bulletin. The authors defined NRA as having both EC50 above the 90th percentile of the control samples and maximal blood flow response below the 60th percentile for the control range. The median log10EC50 of the schizophrenia group was above the third quartile of log10EC50 of either the healthy control or bipolar groups, while the maximal blood flow was significantly lower in the schizophrenia group than in the other two groups. They recruited 70 patients with schizophrenia, 59 with bipolar disorder, and 87 healthy controls.įrom the dose-response curves, the researchers calculated the concentration of methylnicotinate required to elicit a half-maximal blood flow response - i.e., the effective concentration (EC) 50 value - and maximal blood-flow value for each participant. Yao and colleagues used a laser Doppler flowmeter to estimate the prevalence of the niacin response abnormality (NRA) and its specificity in voluntary participants, ages 18 to 65, from the Veterans Affairs Pittsburgh Healthcare System. "We provide evidence that not all schizophrenias are physiologically similar - that some schizophrenias are characterized by an abnormal niacin response, and we show that niacin subsensitivity rarely occurs in bipolar disorder," Dr. These patients are likely to have abnormal functioning of arachidonic acid-derived chemical messengers," he said. We also showed that the abnormality is only present in a subset of schizophrenia patients we believe are physiologically distinct from others. "In patients with schizophrenia, we repeatedly observed an abnormally low sensitivity to the skin flush effect of niacin. Yao of the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, told Reuters Health by email. "In our study of niacin response characteristics among 216 volunteers - the largest study of its kind - we demonstrated that the presence of an abnormal niacin response is specific to schizophrenia, not bipolar disorder, and that the presence of an abnormal niacin response can distinguish between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder with 97% specificity," lead study author Dr. NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - An abnormal response to niacin may help doctors differentiate between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, new research suggests.
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