Schizophrenia can be traced through genes

Siblings of people suffering from schizophrenia show certain brain abnormalities, which gradually diminish by early adulthood. Schizophrenia is a mental illness characterised by impairments in the perception or expression of reality. This commonly manifests itself in forms of auditory hallucinations, paranoid delusions or disorganised speech and thinking. While comparing patients of schizophrenia with their non-psychotic siblings, there has been seen a similar loss of cortical grey matter, which begins in childhood and gradually, fades away by early adulthood. The grey matter is the portion of the brain that controls sensory perception, including sight and hearing, memory, emotions and speech. Such changes in siblings of schizophrenics suggest that abnormalities seen in schizophrenia may be genetically influenced. To assess the genetic traits in patients of schizophrenia, researchers at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland compared the MRIs of 52 healthy siblings of patients with childhood-onset schizophrenia, with the same number of healthy controls. The results highlighted abnormalities in the grey matter of the brain in siblings of schizophrenics, which was relative to the comparison group. However, these deficits disappeared by the time these siblings reached the age of 20 years. Such normalisation points to certain protective factors that work in healthy youngsters. Thus, brain abnormalities in siblings of schizophrenics can be traced to their genes.