New blood-test to aid in schizophrenia diagnosis

A July 1st news release from the University of Cambridge:

A new blood-test resulting from research at Cambridge University could aid in the early diagnosis of recent-onset schizophrenia – complementing the traditional patient interview-based diagnosis.

VeriPsych, developed by Professor Sabine Bahn, Director of the Cambridge Centre for Neuropsychiatric Research, and collaborators at Psynova Neurotech and Rules-Based Medicine, is based upon a blood-based biomarker test - where characteristics are objectively measured and evaluated as an indicator of the presence of disease.

Professor Sabine Bahn, said: "Schizophrenia is a complicated and challenging disease, yet current diagnostic approaches continue to be based on patient interviews and a subjective assessment of clinical symptoms. We expect VeriPsych to be used as an aid to this current process, and we hope it will provide the psychiatrist with additional confidence in their evaluation, as well as speed up the process."

Schizophrenia is a disease that typically begins in early adulthood; between the ages of 15 and 25, affecting 51 million people worldwide with more than 250,000 cases in Britain. Current diagnosis of Schizophrenia is conducted through interviews by a psychiatrist, who follows structured guidelines such as The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a process that can take several months.

During VeriPsych's developmental stage, researchers analysed 200 biomarker candidates individually and in combination to assess their connection to schizophrenia. They discovered a set of 51 biomarkers with linkages to schizophrenia and to various biochemical pathways, including inflammation, metabolism and cell-to-cell signaling. In a subsequent study, the 51 biomarkers were validated in combination with a mathematical process to separate schizophrenia patients from normal controls. The study included analysis of more than 800 well-characterised blood samples collected by leading psychiatric hospitals.

The research was published in the online journal Biomarker Insights. Commercial rights resulting from this research are held by Psynova Neurotech Ltd., which was launched by Cambridge Enterprise in 2005 and is now majority-owned by Rules-Based Medicine, Inc. Professor Bahn is the Co-Founder, Director, and Chief Scientific Officer of Psynova.

Also see:

Validation of a Blood-Based Laboratory Test to Aid in the Confirmation of a Diagnosis of Schizophrenia (PDF)


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Drug ads still stigmatise mental illness

An April 3rd news item from the University of Cambridge:

The way that drugs used to treat mental illness are advertised to doctors could be helping to perpetuate – rather than break down – the stigma still attached to mental health problems.

Over the space of a year, Dr Juliet Foster [pictured] analysed 96 different drug advertisements carried in the British Medical Journal and the British Journal of Psychiatry. She discovered stark differences in the way that psychiatric and non-psychiatric drugs are advertised to health professionals.

Whereas adverts for "physical" diseases such as pain and blood pressure medication usually picture people as happy and active, either in work settings or enjoying their leisure time, psychiatric drugs such as those used to treat depression and Alzheimer's disease are more likely to show troubled or inactive individuals.

According to Dr Foster: "The negative images of distressed, disturbed and often deviant individuals used in advertisements for psychiatric medication contrast sharply with advertisements for non-psychiatric medication which focus on happy smiling people engaged in healthy activity, and perpetuate links between mental health problems and abnormality, fear and otherness."

As well as looking at images, Dr Foster analysed the text used in the drug advertisements. She found that while adverts for non-psychiatric drugs majored on medically-related information on the drug itself, adverts for psychiatric drugs included less text and text that is focussed on narrative description or case studies.

The differences have important implications for the stigma still attached to mental illness, says Dr Foster.

"It is hard to argue that the general public should see mental health problems in the same light as any other health problem when it seems clear that this is not always happening in the health industry," she says.

"It would be wrong to deny that health problems don't cause suffering: people who experience mental health problems obviously do report very high levels of distress and unhappiness at their experiences. But to maintain a distinction between mental health and other health problems, and in particular to portray mental ill health more in terms of chaos, deviance, fear and otherness risks perpetuating stigma that professionals, and service users may strive so hard to dismantle in other areas."

The paper is published in the Journal of Mental Health

I thank John Devlin for bringing this article to my attention.

Also see:

Mental health research in The Lancet: A case study">Mental health research in The Lancet: A case study