Researchers link schizophrenia with microbes in throat
27 Aug 2015
Researchers have linked schizophrenia, a condition which affects a person's ability to think, reason, feel and distinguish what is real and what is imaginary with microbes found in the throat.
Schizophrenia is often described as multiple personalities, but that is not accurate. Also many people fear those with schizophrenia, perceiving them to be violent and dangerous, which too is false.
Researchers from George Washington University have found a link between lactic-acid bacteria and schizophrenics.
According to earlier research on microbes a potential connection with mental health had been surmised. The recent findings corroborated the surmise. Other research had also revealed a possible link between immune disorders and schizophrenia which, thanks to the new research, was now open for further possibilities of study.
According to commentators, the research might lead to better diagnosis and treatment as it brought us a step closer to identifying the cause of schizophrenia.
Though the exact cause of the condition is not known, for decades scientists had been looking at the link between schizophrenia and the immune system. The immune system appeared weaker in schizophrenic patients, but researchers did not understand how the two were connected.
According to the research into microbiome - the colonies of bacteria that lived in and around our bodies, these organisms played a surprisingly large part in all sorts of functions, including regulating our moods and modulating our immune systems.
The researchers from George Washington University decided to investigate which bacteria made up the microbiome in patients with and without schizophrenia.
They took throat swabs of 32 patients, half of whom had schizophrenia while the other half did not, and sequenced the genes of the bacteria they found. They looked at the type of bacteria and their concentrations.
The research showed that the bacteria living in the throats of schizophrenic patients were very different from those in the control patients. Control patients had different concentrations of commonly found bacteria, there was also greater diversity of bacterial species, while schizophrenic patients had more lactic acid bacteria, which could indicate an imbalance in their microbiomes.
(Also see: Researchers identify signature of microbiomes associated with schizophrenia)
