Transcriptional level of inflammation markers associates with short-term brain structural changes in first-episode schizophrenia.

BACKGROUND: Inflammation has been implicated in the pathology of schizophrenia and may cause neuronal cell death and dendrite loss. Neuroimaging studies have highlighted longitudinal brain structural changes in patients with schizophrenia, yet it is unclear whether this is related to inflammation. We aim to address this question, by relating brain structural changes with the transcriptional profile of inflammation markers in the early stage of schizophrenia. METHODS: Thirty-eight patients with first-episode schizophrenia and 51 healthy controls were included. High-resolution T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and clinical assessments were performed at baseline and 2 ~ 6 months follow-up for all subjects. Changes in the brain structure were analyzed using surface-based morphological analysis and correlated with the expression of immune cells-related gene sets of interest reported by previous reviews. Transcriptional data were retrieved from the Allen Human Brain Atlas. Furthermore, we examined the brain structural changes and peripheral inflammation markers in association with behavioral symptoms and cognitive functioning in patients. RESULTS: Patients exhibited accelerated cortical thickness decrease in the left frontal cortices, less decrease or an increase in the superior parietal lobule and right lateral occipital lobe, and increased volume in the bilateral pallidum, compared with controls. Changes in cortical thickness correlated with the transcriptional level of monocyte across cortical regions in patients (r = 0.54, p < 0.01), but not in controls (r = - 0.05, p = 0.76). In addition, cortical thickness change in the left superior parietal lobule positively correlated with changes in digital span-backward test scores in patients. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with schizophrenia exhibit regional-specific cortical thickness changes in the prefrontal and parietooccipital cortices, which is related to their cognitive impairment. Inflammation may be an important factor contributing to cortical thinning in first-episode schizophrenia. Our findings suggest that the immunity-brain-behavior association may play a crucial role in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging throughout the Clinical Course of Schizophrenia: Neurobiological Underpinnings and Clinical Implications.

As a non-invasive detection method and an advanced imaging method, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been widely used in the research of schizophrenia. Although a large number of neuroimaging studies have confirmed that MRI can display abnormal brain phenotypes in patients with schizophrenia, no valid uniform standard has been established for its clinical application. On the basis of previous evidence, we argue that MRI is an important tool throughout the whole clinical course of schizophrenia. The purpose of this commentary is to systematically describe the role of MRI in schizophrenia and to provide references for its clinical application.

Shaping the Trans-Scale Properties of Schizophrenia via Cerebral Alterations on Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms of Coding and Non-Coding Regions.

Schizophrenia is a complex mental illness with genetic heterogeneity, which is often accompanied by alterations in brain structure and function. The neurobiological mechanism of schizophrenia associated with heredity remains unknown. Recently, the development of trans-scale and multi-omics methods that integrate gene and imaging information sheds new light on the nature of schizophrenia. In this article, we summarized the results of brain structural and functional changes related to the specific single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the past decade, and the SNPs were divided into non-coding regions and coding regions, respectively. It is hoped that the relationship between SNPs and cerebral alterations can be displayed more clearly and intuitively, so as to provide fresh approaches for the discovery of potential biomarkers and the development of clinical accurate individualized treatment decision-making.