SYDNEY, Sept. 14 (Xinhua) -- Australian scientist and 30-year schizophrenia research veteran Professor Cynthia Shannon Weickert has made a major breakthrough in her field by identifying increased amounts of immune cells in the brains of some people who suffer from the disease.
Weickert's research, which was released on Friday, could lead to better diagnosis and treatments, which are currently only partially able to relieve symptoms and often include unwanted side effects.
"This opens whole new avenues for therapy, because it suggests that the pathology of schizophrenia could be within the immune cells and the immune cells could be contributing to the symptoms of schizophrenia," Weickert said.
"In our study, we challenged this assumption that immune cells were independent of the brain in psychiatric illness and made an exciting discovery."
According to Weickert, in the past these new suspects had been thought of as benign travellers and mostly ignored; however the discovery of them in large numbers in the brains of schizophrenics suggest they are more active than they once seemed.
Weickert herself has a personal connection to the disease, witnessing her twin brother suffering multiple attempts to treat his schizophrenia which often did more harm than good.
The experience is what prompted Weickert to become a molecular biologist in the first place, believing that with finely tuned research she could stem the devastating effect that schizophrenia has on people who would otherwise live normal and happy lives.
"I just thought my God we have to get to the bottom of this horrible thing happening to a normal kid," Weickert said.
Weickert believes that the way forward in psychiatry is to study the brains tissue to discover the underlying causes of pathologies, similar to the way breast cancers have been studied on a molecular level.
"This is the biggest breakthrough and the most exciting thing I've dug up about the brain in all this time," Weickert said.
"I can see the path forward now and that's really exciting."
