More Evidence of Physical Cause of Schizophrenia

LONDON - U.S. researchers said Friday they had found more evidence of a physical cause of schizophrenia. Dr. Nancy Andreason and colleagues at the University of Iowa said they had found evidence of altered blood flow in the prefrontal cortex of the brain -- the part most linked with human social behavior. Positron emission tomography (PET) scans on 17 people with schizophrenia showed some areas had too much blood flow, and presumably brain cell activity, while others had too little. Reporting in The Lancet, a medical journal, they said such crossed circuits may cause the hallucinations, delusions and loss of self-control that mark schizophrenia. Other studies have shown this sort of pattern, but were confusing because of the drugs given to schizophrenia patients. Andreason's patients were newly diagnosed with the disease and had not yet received drugs. In a second report, Dr. Osama Sabri and colleagues at the Aachen University of Technology in Germany found similar results in 24 patients who had not been given drugs.