Study This acne medicine can protect against schizophrenia

New treatment approach against schizophrenia discovered

American researchers have recently found evidence that certain processes of brain development that occur predominantly during puberty have become excessive in people with schizophrenia. This results in structural abnormalities in the brain suspected of inducing schizophrenia. The research team also discovered that the antibiotic minocycline, which is widely used to treat acne, can protect against structural brain changes.

Researchers at the Center for Genomic Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital have recently found new evidence for the unsatisfied causes of schizophrenia. According to the study, the brain is restructured during the period of adolescence (adolescence). In so-called synaptic pruning, depending on experience, certain nerve connections are strengthened and others are severed. According to the research team, this process took place in excess of patients with schizophrenia. The study results were recently published in the renowned journal "Nature Neuroscience".

What happens in the brain during adolescence

During puberty, massive transformation processes take place in the brain. While all possible nerve connections are built up in the childhood phase, it is sorted out during adolescence according to the principle "Use it or lose it". In the process, unused brain connections are cut off, and frequently used ones are strengthened instead. In this way, the brain can work more efficiently depending on the stress. This process is called synaptic pruning, or truncation of synapses. Innate immune cells, the so-called microglia, control the process of restructuring.

What happens in the brain of schizophrenics

Researchers led by study director Roy Perlis found that these circumcisions of the synapses in the brains of patients with schizophrenia are faster and more extensive. This suggests that this is the cause or at least part of the cause of the disease's development. Since preclinical research has already shown that the antibiotic minocycline is effective in neurodegenerative diseases, the researchers have used model experiments to investigate how minocycline affects nerve cells in brains of schizophrenia patients. Higher doses almost completely normalized excessive synaptic circumcision.

Operation so far unknown

Minocycline is a broad-spectrum antibiotic from the group of tetracyclines and is used to inhibit the multiplication of various bacteria. In particular, it shows good effect in inflammatory acne. Why this antibiotic also helps in certain neurodegenerative diseases and why it affects synaptic circumcision is still unclear.

Clinical trial is pending

"As encouraging as these first results are, they are only the first step," reports study leader Perlis, who is also a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, in a press release on the study findings. However, there is reason to hope that this approach will develop the first therapy to prevent schizophrenia. (Vb)