Brains of Schizophrenia Patients May Be Reversing Effects of the Disease

That is the title of this article I am reviewing today. "The brains of patients with slchizophrenia may be trying to reorganize and fight the illness, according to a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) study conducted by an international team of scientists. This is the first time that imaging data has been used to show how our brains may have the ability to reverse the effects of schizophrenia. Although schizophrenia is generally associated with a widespread reduction in brain tissue volume, the new findings reveal a subtle and simultaneous increase in brain tissue in certain regions. The researchers followed 98 patients with schizophrenia and compared them to 83 patients without schizophrenia. Using MRI and a statistical approach called covariance analysis, the research team measured any increases in brain tissue. Due to the subtlety and the distributed nature of increase, this has not been demonstrated in patients until now."I would not know that last time I had a relapse was in 1994.  It was not as bad as the original illness that came on in 1988 although it was enough to send me back to the state hospital because it was worse each day.
The article goes on to say: "According to Lawson Health Research Institute’s Dr. Lena Palaniyappan, there is an overarching feeling that curing people with a severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia, is not possible. This stems from the long-held notion that schizophrenia is a degenerative illness, with the seeds of damage sown very early during the course of brain development. 'Even the state-of-art frontline treatments aim merely for a reduction rather than a reversal of the cognitive and functional deficits caused by the illness,' said Palaniyappan, medical director at the Prevention & Early Intervention Program for Psychoses (PEPP) at London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC). 'Our results highlight that despite the severity of tissue damage, the brain of a patient with schizophrenia is constantly attempting to reorganize itself, possibly to rescue itself or limit the damage,' said Palaniyappan.'" It makes me wonder about that psychiatrist who kept me without medication for six months or longer if I would have been so ill that I wonder if I started hearing voices for the first time at the state hospital.
The article ends: "The next step is to study the evolution of this brain tissue reorganization process by repeatedly scanning individual patients with early schizophrenia and to investigate the effect of this reorganization on their recovery. 'These findings are important not only because of their novelty and the rigour of the study, but because they point the way to the development of targeted treatments that potentially could better address some of the core pathology in schizophrenia,' said Dr. Jeffrey Reiss, Site Chief, Psychiatry, LHSC. The project is part of an international collaboration among scientists in Nottingham, UK, Shanghai and Changsha, People’s Republic of China, Robarts Research Institutes at Western University and Lawson Health Research Institute.'" Yeah it seems like they have to catch this disease early on to make this benefit if there is one.

Structural Brain Abnormalities Linked to Schizophrenia

That is the title of the article I am writing about. "A collaborative international study has discovered that individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia often have smaller brain regions than people without mental illness. The finding provides a clue into how the condition may develop and respond to treatment. In the study, scientists at more than a dozen locations across the United States and Europe analyzed brain MRI scans from 2,028 schizophrenia patients and 2,540 healthy controls.
The findings, which experts believe will help to advance improved understanding of the mental disorder, appear in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. The work was the product of the Enhancing Neuroimaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis project (ENIGMA), from the Schizophrenia Working Group. The Group is co-chaired by Dr. Jessica Turner, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Georgia State University, and Dr. Theo van Erp, assistant research professor in psychiatry at the University of California, Irvine." This is very interesting because it can find out why I lose some of the knowledge I had before this disease.  Maybe they can find out and stop it from happening this could really help.
The article goes on to say: "'This is the largest structural brain meta-analysis to date in schizophrenia, and specifically, it is not a meta-analysis pulled only from the literature,' said Turner.  'Investigators dug into their desk drawers, including unpublished data to participate in these analyses.  Everyone performed the same analyses using the same statistical models, and we combined the results. We then identified brain regions that differentiated patients from controls and ranked them according to their effect sizes.'  The team found individuals with schizophrenia have smaller volume in the hippocampus, amygdala, thalamus, nucleus, accumbens, and intracranial space controls, and larger pallidum and ventricle volumes.  The study demonstrates that collaborative data analyses can be used across brain phenotypes and disorders.  This approach encourages analysis and data-sharing efforts to further understanding of severe mental illness." Does it have anything to do with negative symptoms.  What does it cause and what medicines can come about because of this?
The article ends with: "The ENIGMA collaborations include working groups for others disorders such as bipolar disorder, attention deficit, major depression, autism and addictions, who are all doing these same analyses.  Researchers say the next step is to compare the effects across disorders, to identify which brain region is the most effected in which disorder, and to determine the effects of age, medication ,environment, and symptom profiles across these disorders. 'There's the increased possibility, not just because of the massive data sets, but also because of the collaborative brain power being applied here from around the world, that we will find something real and reliable that will change how we think about these disorders and what we can do about them,' Turner said." I really hope there is something that comes of this. I have questions such as do they find people who are about to be diagnosed with schizophrenia to see if the medications is causing this shrinking of the areas?  Can they stop it from happening.  What does it have to do with people taking medications and still having problems with this disease?