What if it was easier to prevent schizophrenia than to treat it?

Kristen J. Brennand

doi:10.1038/s41537-017-0012-x

Abstract

What if it was easier to prevent schizophrenia than to treat it?

Highlights

Neural tube defects occur when the brain or the spinal cord fails to close early in embryonic development
With the Nobel Prize winning discovery by Shinya Yamanaka in 2007, it is possible to reprogram human-induced pluripotent stem cells from patient cells;[3] these hiPSCs have the ability to differentiate into all cell types found in the body.[4]
Using hiPSCs, we and others have found that schizophrenia hiPSC-derived neural progenitor cells show evidence of aberrant migration,[12] deficits associated with adherens junctions and polarity,[13] increased oxidative stress[12, 14, 15] and perturbed responses to environmental stressors;[16] while schizophrenia hiPSC-derived neurons exhibit decreased neurite number,[17] reduced synaptic maturation[14, 17,18,19] and synaptic activity,[18, 19] and blunted activity-dependent response.[20]

Summary

Introduction

Neural tube defects occur when the brain or the spinal cord fails to close early in embryonic development. While genetic polymorphisms affecting folate metabolism suggest that only certain individuals may be at increased risk for neural tube defects,[1] since

Results

Conclusion