Researchers at Northwestern University in the US have discovered that calcium transfer in neurons could be a potential new treatment for a rare form of schizophrenia. The results of the study were published in the journal. magazine Biological Psychiatry.
Calcium signaling is the use of calcium ions to transmit and control intracellular processes, usually at the signal transduction stage. Schizophrenia is characterized by auditory and visual hallucinations, delusions, and problems forming and sequencing thoughts that severely affect productivity and overall quality of life. People with schizophrenia can be treated with antipsychotics, but these drugs do not treat cognitive symptoms. Also, not all patients respond to these drugs.
The study’s authors noted that a potential solution for the development of new treatments for schizophrenia are induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) — cells derived from a patient’s blood or skin and which can be reprogrammed into any cell in the body, including neurons. .
So the researchers generated neurons from two patients with a rare form of schizophrenia and three healthy patients, which contain the 16p11.2 duplication mutation that increases the risk of developing schizophrenia sixteen-fold. Neural cell lines were grown in the laboratory for seven weeks until complete neural networks were formed.
It seems that calcium signaling functions abnormally in the brain cells of schizophrenia patients compared to healthy neurons. According to the scientists, in future studies, doctors plan to find drugs that will correct the abnormalities in calcium conduction. They can be beneficial not only for schizophrenics, but also for patients with other diseases such as autism.