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Schizophrenia, Social Security Disability, and Applying for Benefits



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Schizophrenia is a severe brain disorder that affects about 1 percent of Americans. It is a complicated disorder that is commonly treated by antipsychotic drugs, which can alleviate symptoms in some patients, but not cure the disease. While the medical community has known about schizophrenia for a long time, no known cause has been found. Fortunately, new studies may hold the key.

Scientists from the studies believe the mental illness may be caused by mutations in various genes that interrupt biological pathways essential to normal brain development. This frees up the idea they are searching for one key gene that is responsible for schizophrenia. Now, they are considering the fact that there might be many different DNA deletions and duplications that disrupt genes linked to pathways crucial to brain development.

One team looked at a group of schizophrenics who developed the disease as children, finding genetic interruptions or glitches in 20 percent, while another study looked at DNA from 268 healthy people and 150 schizophrenics and found that 15 percent of the schizophrenics had these glitches, while only 5 percent of the healthy subjects showed a presence of disruptions. The second study was done by researchers at the University of Washington and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, New York.

Finding the genes responsible for these glitches in brain development may inspire new drugs to treat schizophrenia and other neuro-developmental brain disorders. More studies are ongoing.








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