Scientific background and study rationale
psychotic illness, illness, anhedonia, inflammation, psychotic symptomatology, delusions, hallucinations, cognitive dysfunction, schizophrenia
INFLAMMATION, HAND PRESENTATION, INFLAMMATORY RESPONSE
The neuroimmune hypothesis of schizophrenia proposes that mild peripheral immune activation gives rise to an inflammatory response in the brain and neurobiological changes associated with psychotic illness.The neuroimmune hypothesis generally assumes that microglia, the brain’s resident immune cells, are activated and pathogenic in schizophrenia. This is supported by traditional neuropathological studies and initial in vivo positron emission tomography (PET) imaging studies,Previous attempts of testing the inflammatory hypothesis in therapeutic clinical trials have been attempted. However, little evidence of overall efficacy has been found.Selection of patients with particular symptom profiles and/or stage of illness may also be a useful strategy that needs to be employed in immunotherapy trials for schizophrenia. A wide variety of symptoms occur in schizophrenia such as hallucinations, delusions, anhedonia, cognitive dysfunction and affective symptoms and presentation of these symptoms differ from one individual to another. Some symptoms may be more related to inflammation than others. For instance, meta-analytic data suggests that elevated proinflammatory cytokines are associated with negative psychotic symptomatology.