Schizophrenia Daily News Blog

Schizophrenia Tests

Brain test research finds key to mental illness - Scans mean breakthrough for people prone to schizophrenia

"RESEARCHERS have claimed a major breakthrough in the treatment of schizophrenia by using brain-imaging tests to predict the illness.

Consultant psychiatrist Dr Stephen Lawrie, of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital and the division of psychiatry at Edinburgh University?s faculty of medicine, said his team had picked up specific changes in the brains of people who would go on to develop schizophrenia.

Their work is part of a long-term research project involving the testing of more than 100 people whose relatives have schizophrenia and so are genetically predisposed to it."

"We have identified changes in the brain that can predict schizophrenia up to five years in advance. These are changes that would happen before anyone would make a clinical diagnosis."

The results are utterly amazing. The obvious implication is that if we can detect the illness early, we can intervene and maybe even prevent it.

This is great news for the world as it will (assuming that this research is repeated and is able to be used in many countries with the correct brain scanning equipment) allow much earlier diagnosis of people who have schizophrenia - while at the same time reducing the number of mis-diagnoses.

We'll be sure to report on more developments related to this story as we learn about them.

For the full story see this link: Brain test research finds key to schizophrenia