Drug Problem

Unpicking the cause of schizophrenia is complicated, but the brain chemical dopamine (pictured are crystals of the chemical viewed with polarised light) is known to underlie one of the key characteristics of the disease: psychosis. That said scientists are still trying to figure out exactly how. Antipsychotic medication typically blocks receptors in the dopamine pathway. For many, this quashes some of the unpleasant symptoms – hallucinations, delusions, thought and movement disorders. For millions of others the drugs don’t work. Researchers recently scanned the brains of over 600 patients with schizophrenia and found that overproduction of dopamine is central to psychosis. They suggest that drug treatment could be more effective were it to tackle dopamine synthesis, rather than targeting the receptors to which dopamine binds once it has already been made.

Written by Brona McVittie

Brona McVittie

Writer/Consultant

Independent science blogger and musician. Got the whole BPoD show on the road while heading up the public engagement team at the MRC CSC. Loves gardening, cooking and diving. Makes corkbots too.

• Image by Spike Walker
• Wellcome Images
• Originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY-NC-ND 2.0)
• Research published in Archives of General Psychiatry, August 2012