Mental disorders such as schizophrenia are among the most expensive disorders in terms of quality of life and societal cost. Early identification and intervention can lead to improved outcome and is facilitated by focusing particularly on clinical-high-risk-for-psychosis (CHR), as up to 25-30% go on to develop psychotic disorder (PD) at 6 year follow-up. There is growing evidence for the involvement of the immune system in this disorder. We have added to this literature by demonstrating that the complement pathway, i.e. the blood plasma component of the immune system, is dysregulated in psychosis. Blood samples of individuals at age 11 show this dysregualtion long before these individuals report PD symptoms at age 17 . Based on our own plasma biomarker work we now have evidence for a set of biomarker proteins which can predict transition from CHR to PD with a high degree of accuracy. We now seek to replicate these findings in work funded by the Wellcome Trust as a part of the €1.4m IMPETUS research program (https://wellcome.org/grant-funding/funded-people-and-projects/innovations-flagships).
Using methods that allows us to quantify proteins in the blood we aim to assess plasma protein A2M. This protein contributed significantly to the high prediction we achieved in our preliminary work. In this summer project we seek to contribute to the validation/replication of this important finding. We will also use statistical methods relevant to prediction, using our valuable replication data sets donated by the North American Psychosis Longitudinal Studies.
