Hope for mentally ill from findings

LONDON - British psychiatrists are pioneering an imaging technique to detect changes in the brain in the earliest stages of schizophrenia.

Just as cancer specialists have found that early detection aids treatment of the disease, psychiatrists hope for the same with schizophrenia.

Early detection, before patients experience psychosis such as delusions or hearing voices, will allow doctors to start early treatment and may improve recovery chances.

Until now scientists had not realised that physical changes to the brain could occur in the earliest stages of the disease.

"In schizophrenia, we have had a romantic notion of intervening before the condition has developed, but so far our instruments for diagnosis have not been good enough to allow us to do so," says Dr Tonmoy Sharma, of the Institute of Psychiatry in London.

But he said his study showed brain imaging might become a powerful predictor of illness.

"Not only do we need to go in for early intervention but we need to see if we can prevent the eruption of psychosis and whether we can prevent the inevitable deterioration that we see in brain structure and function in these people," Dr Sharma said.

Dr Sharma used the magnetic resonance imaging technique on 68 people, including 37 who had their first psychosis within the past three months, and compared them with scans of healthy volunteers.

His research showed differences in three areas of the brain, suggesting the changes occurred before patients started experiencing symptoms.

The researchers are focusing on the prodrome phase, one of the earliest stages of the disease.

Schizophrenia is the most common form of severe mental illness. Its causes are still unknown but scientists know it affects chemicals in the brain and believe there is a biological link which can predispose a person to the disease.

It affects about one person in a hundred and usually begins in the late teens and early 20s. It is characterised by hallucinations, delusions and hearing voices.

Men and women are equally affected.

- NZPA