New Blood Test May Diagnose Psychosis and Onset of Schizophrenia

There may be a new way to diagnose patients who are experiencing the earliest stages of psychosis. Scientists have found that a simple blood test could actually be used as an indicator for psychosis.

Psychosis includes hallucinations or delusions that actually define the development of severe mental disorders, such as schizophrenia. Schizophrenia develops in late adolescence and early adulthood, which means that identifying it early can greatly help a patient.

In this case, the researchers turned to a blood test. The scientists used this blood test in psychiatric patients experiencing symptoms that are considered to be indicators of a high risk for psychosis. In the end, it identified patients who later went on to develop psychosis.

"The blood test included a selection of 15measures of immune and hormonal system imbalances as well as evidence of oxidative stress," said Diana O. Perkins, one of the researchers, in a news release. "While further research is required before this blood test could be clinically available, these results provide evidence regarding the fundamental nature of schizophrenia, and point towards novel pathways that could be targets for preventative interventions."

The findings could mean there's a new way to help diagnose patients in the future. This could be a good way to start treatments earlier, which could help young adults at risk of developing schizophrenia.

"Modern, computer-based methods can readily discover seemingly clear patterns from nonsensical data," said Clark Jeffries, co-author of the new study. "Added to that, scientific results from studies of complex disorders like schizophrenia can be confounded by many hidden dependencies. Thus, stringent testing is necessary to build a useful classifier. We did that."

The findings are published in the journal Schizophrenia Bulletin.