Potential future prevention strategies may focus on addressing the treatment of the placenta. A new study conducted by the Lieber Institute for Brain Development suggests that the risk of schizophrenia is largely due to the role of over 100 associated genes in the placenta, rather than in the devel
Schizophrenia is a complex mental disorder characterized by a combination of symptoms that affect a person’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. It typically emerges in late adolescence or early adulthood and can cause hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking, and social withdrawal.
The researchers found that schizophrenia genes influence a critical function of the placenta to sense nutrients in the mother’s bloodstream, including oxygen, and exchange nutrients based on what it finds. The schizophrenia risk genes are more lowly expressed in the cells of the placenta that form the core of this maternal-fetal nutrient exchange, called trophoblasts, negatively affecting the placenta’s role in nurturing the developing fetus.
“Targeting placenta biology is a crucial new potential approach to prevention, which is the holy grail of public health,” says Gianluca Ursini, M.D., Ph.D., the lead author on the paper and an investigator at the Lieber Institute. “Scientists could detect changes in placental risk genes decades before the possible onset of a disorder, possibly even in the mother’s bloodstream during pregnancy.
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