Schizophrenia is a frequent disease which affects approximately 1% of the French population and which causes a number of cognitive disorders such as hallucinations, depression or alterations in thinking. By conducting research on mice, American researchers from Georgia Regents University have just shown that it was undoubtedly possible to reduce the appearance of these symptoms, by modifying the level of neuregulin-1, a protein located on the chromosome 8.
According to the researchers, this protein is found at a high level in people suffering from schizophrenia. And while working on this protein level in mice, they noticed that rodents no longer developed behavioral disorders when the level of neuregulin-1 returned to a normal level.
The next step in their research will therefore be to develop a treatment that would consist in blocking the neuregulin-1 development pathways. However, this protein is not totally bad for our brain since other American researchers have shown that it also makes it possible to ensure the longevity of species. A high level of this protein would thus make it possible to live a hundred years!
