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NIMH awards $3.5 million to further develop new diagnosis system for psychotic disorders
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The NIMH has awarded $3.5 million to fund the second phase of the Bipolar-Schizophrenia Network on Intermediate Phenotypes consortium, a multi-university collaboration focused on increasing development of novel therapies and creating a new system of diagnosis for psychotic disorders using biomarkers.
The NIMH initially funded the Bipolar-Schizophrenia Network on Intermediate Phenotypes (B-SNIP) consortium to study intermediate phenotypes associated with risk for schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder and bipolar disorder. Researchers assessed various biomarkers including cognitive abilities, brain structure and function and genetics among 1,000 individuals with psychosis and 1,500 family members.
Initial findings highlighted biomarkers, or “biotypes,” used to identify patient clusters independent of traditional diagnosis.
The second phase of B-SNIP will include 3,000 additional individuals and healthy controls over 5 years. Traditional behavioral and symptom assessment, cognitive function tests assessing memory and attention, brain composition, structure and electrical activity, eye movement and auditory tests and genomic-wide genetic analysis will be conducted.
“Emerging evidence suggests that schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorders and bipolar disorders have similar deficits, with differences in severity but not in pattern,” study researcher Elliot Gershon, MD, of the University of Chicago, said in a press release. “Our aim is to reformulate the diagnosis of these psychotic disorders, so that it is based on their underlying biology and not just symptoms.”
Overall findings of B-SNIP will be used to create a Psychosis Biomarker Database that includes biotypes and subtypes of psychotic disorders quantified and validated by multivariate statistical analysis.
“Previous studies that have looked at the association between individual traits or genes and psychotic disorders have been informative, but not transformative,” study researcher Sarah Keedy, PhD, of the University of Chicago, said in the release. “By measuring these associations in combination, rather than individually, on an unprecedented scale, we hope to establish rational, biologically meaningful categorizations that will allow us to better diagnose, predict onset of, and target treatments for these disorders.”