BIOMARKERS AND CAUSATIVE FACTORS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA

Abstract

Schizophrenia is a major debilitating, complex and costly illness that strikes 1% of the world’s population. It is found in every society from the most primitive to the largest and most technologically advanced society. The excessive degree of cigarette smoking exhibited by schizophrenic patients suggests that they might be self medicating to ameliorate to some extent the characteristic positive, negative and cognitive symptoms associated with the disease. Morphological examinations found alterations in nicotinic receptors in postmortem tissue from schizophrenic individuals compared to controls, especially in the α 7 and α 4β2 subtypes. These results have spurred the development of new pharmaceuticals specifically designed to modulate nicotinic receptor function. The initial results from clinical trials of these new drugs appear promising, potentially opening new avenues of treatment for this devastating disease. In the present review article, the authors have described various neuromodulators such as Dopamine, Glutamate, Acetylcholine, Serotonin, GABA etc. responsible for causing schizophrenia.