While the OASIS program and the UNC Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health strive to help patients and their families in the process of recovery from psychotic disorders, the ultimate goal is to develop preventative interventions. An important step toward this goal is accurately identifying who is truly at risk for psychosis. The results of a new study from the National Institutes of Mental Health sponsored NAPLS collaboration*, led by Diana Perkins, MD, MPH, the medical director of UNC’s Outreach and Support Intervention Services (OASIS) program for schizophrenia, report for the first time evidence that psychosis risk could be predicted by a blood test.
The study represents an important step forward in the accurate diagnosis of people who are experiencing the earliest stages of psychosis.
Psychosis includes hallucinations or delusions that define the development of severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia. Schizophrenia emerges in late adolescence and early adulthood and affects about 1 in every 100 people. In severe cases, the impact on a young person can be a life compromised, and the burden on family members can be almost as severe.
Over the past decade the NAPLS project has worked to define the early warning signs of psychosis. At best, however, clinical symptoms identify persons who have a 1 in 4 chance of developing a psychotic disorder. The study published in the journal Schizophrenia Bulletin reports preliminary results showing that a blood test, when used in persons experiencing high risk symptoms, could significantly improve risk prediction accuracy.
“The blood test included a selection of 15 measures of immune and hormonal system imbalances as well as evidence of oxidative stress,” says Perkins, professor in psychiatry in the UNC School of Medicine and corresponding author of the study.
“While further research is required before this blood test could be clinically available, these results provide evidence regarding the fundamental nature of schizophrenia, and point towards novel pathways that could be targets for preventative interventions,” Perkins says.
The study concludes that the multiplex blood assay, if independently replicated and if integrated with studies of other classes of biomarkers, has the potential to be of high value in the clinical setting.
Clark Jeffries, PhD, bioinformatics scientist at the UNC-based Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), is also co-author of the study. He led the data analysis efforts for this project.