November 25, 2016 – More in Common

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Anchor lead:  A new study suggests common defects in mental illness, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Conditions as seemingly distinct as schizophrenia to depression as well as other mental health issues may have a common root, research by Sarven Sabunciyan, a researcher in pediatrics and developmental neurovirology at Johns Hopkins, and colleagues has shown.

Sabunciyan: What we essentially discovered is that there are common problems in the brains of people with psychiatric disease. So it doesn’t matter if you have schizophrenia, mood disorder,  or depression is that there are these fundamental changes in the brain that are associated with the disease, and essentially what this says is there are a lot of common differences.  These are not really separate diseases, they share a lot of pathology.   :29

Sabunciyan says the research may suggest pathways that could be interrupted or modified to halt development or progression of these conditions, as well as help researchers understand how our immune system might be involved in the development of mental illness.  At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.