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According to the researchers this new treatment will help target the root causes of schizophrenia in a more fundamental way than current therapies do because the focus is on the way brain cells react to the immune system of the body.
In an interview with Sputnik, Oliver Howes, a professor of molecular psychiatry at the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences and a consultant psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital in South London said that currently doctors are using a method to block chemical dopamine from getting released into the patient's bloodstream, but sometimes it fails to address all of the symptoms of the illness.
"If the illness isn't treated it can sometimes lead to death. More often actually it is individuals ending their own lives, so they are much more at risk of that. But what is radically new about our approach is that instead of just blocking the downward consequences, we are trying to target the upstream causes. Particularly the immune system," Howes said.
Comment: The current epidemic growth in dementia may be linked to decades of misguided advice which have advocated low-fat diets as well as mainstream medicine's obsession with cholesterol lowering drugs. Researchers are discovering that both fat and cholesterol are severely deficient in the Alzheimer's brain. Fat and cholesterol are both vital nutrients in the brain; the brain contains only 2% of the body's mass, but 25% of the total cholesterol.