A growing body of research has shown that autoimmunity influences certain psychiatric disorders. A new study by Nemani et al., currently in preprint, has shown that schizophrenia is strongly associated with an elevated level of autoantibodies that target the central nervous system. Using Rapid Extracellular Antigen Profiling (REAP) to screen 352 patients against 971 controls, the researchers found that schizophrenia is marked by an increased autoantibody burden that tracks with disease severity and duration, nearly doubling in the most chronic cases.
These immune responses are present near the start of the illness and tend to increase as the disease progresses, particularly targeting neuronal ion channels and synaptic proteins. Notably, certain autoantibodies appear to compromise the blood–brain barrier, which may further expose the brain to peripheral immune attacks.
The study also discovered that patients with a higher autoantibody burden respond less effectively to standard antipsychotic treatments like risperidone. However, clinical trials showed that these antibody levels significantly declined during successful treatment courses. These findings suggest that humoral autoimmunity is a core component of the disorder, potentially offering new pathways for immune-based therapies.
The article is available on the BioRxiv preprint server.
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