Modeling a linkage between blood transcriptional expression and activity in brain regions to infer the phenotype of schizophrenia patients.
El Chérif IbrahimVincent GuillemotMagali ComteArthur TenenhausXavier Yves ZendjidjianAida CancelRaoul BelzeauxFlorence SauvanaudOlivier BlinVincent FrouinEric FakraPublished in: NPJ schizophrenia (2017)
SEARCHING FOR LINKS TO AID DIAGNOSIS: Researchers explore links between the expression of genes associated with schizophrenia in blood cells and variations in brain activity during emotion processing. El Chérif Ibrahim and Eric Fakra at Aix-Marseille Université, France, and colleagues have developed a method to relate the expression levels of 33 schizophrenia susceptibility genes in blood cells and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data obtained as individuals carry out a task that triggers emotional responses. Although they found no significant differences in the expression of genes between the 26 patients with schizophrenia and 26 healthy controls they examined, variations in activity in the superior temporal gyrus were strongly linked to schizophrenia-associated gene expression and presence of disease. Similar analyses of larger data sets will shed further light on the relationship between peripheral molecular changes and disease-related behaviors and ultimately, aid the diagnosis of neuropsychiatric disease.
Keyphrases
- poor prognosis
- bipolar disorder
- gene expression
- magnetic resonance imaging
- induced apoptosis
- genome wide
- end stage renal disease
- binding protein
- resting state
- depressive symptoms
- ejection fraction
- cell cycle arrest
- dna methylation
- autism spectrum disorder
- newly diagnosed
- electronic health record
- machine learning
- functional connectivity
- peritoneal dialysis
- hepatitis c virus
- chronic kidney disease
- multiple sclerosis
- prognostic factors
- pulmonary tuberculosis
- human immunodeficiency virus
- cell death
- heat shock protein
- genome wide analysis