Scientists create schizophrenic mouse
Mice could help scientists to understand schizophrenia
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Tuesday, 31, Jul 2007 01:52
Scientists have created mice with many of the symptoms of schizophrenia in an attempt to study the origins of this disorder.
Mice have proved useful for research into physical disorders, but modelling psychiatric diseases has so far been much harder.
However research into the genetics of diseases like schizophrenia has made the newly-adapted mice possible by suggesting possible genes for the disorder, such as the Disrupted-in-Schizophrenia, or DISC1, gene.
Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, scientists from the US and Japan report how mice with an adapted version of this gene showed brain changes similar to the asymmetrical brain anatomy seen in patients with schizophrenia.
Their behaviour changed as well; they displayed hyperactivity, depression-like-symptoms and disturbance in information processing.
There was also a decrease in a protein marker associated with abnormal electrical patterns observed in schizophrenia patients.
The researchers believe these mutant mice could therefore be an important tool for studying combinations of factors that underlie major mental illness such as schizophrenia.
"The present model has advantages for testing genetic epistatic effects [where one gene suppresses another], as well as gene-environmental interactions for major mental illnesses," they write.
"Cross-breeding of this mouse model with other genetically engineered mice or experiments involving viral infections may be proposed."