In the last decade, doctors and medical professionals have made strides in diagnosing neurological disorders. However, for many, it still remains a complex and challenging area to navigate.
Recently, researchers at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center have been devising a relatively simpler way to diagnose neurological and psychiatric disorders precisely.
They created a blood test to identify disease-associated changes in the brain specifically linked to postpartum depression and other psychiatric and neurological disorders.
Detects neurological and psychiatric disorders
According to a statement by Johns Hopkins, ‘researchers used genetic markers in maternal blood that serve as “stand-ins” for brain molecules.’
This test aims to find out if there are any changes in the brain linked to mental health issues like postpartum depression and other brain-related disorders.
Researchers studied tiny sacs of genetic material called extracellular vesicles (EVs) in the blood. These sacs carry messages from brain cells and can tell us about what's happening in the brain.
Their research, published in January, shows that they've found some specific genetic messages in these blood sacs that come from the brain. By looking at these messages, they can see if any changes inside the brain might be related to mental health problems.
Conventionally, doctors rely on talking to patients. However, this test could identify “footprints” of brain cell-derived mRNAs in the blood circulating outside the brain according to the statement.
“These blood extracellular vesicles carry brain-specific pieces of genetic material that potentially allow researchers to detect disease-associated changes in gene activity inside the brain,” noted Johns Hopkins.
13 specific brain-specific messages discovered
The researchers found 13 specific brain-specific messages in the blood by studying data from other projects that mapped out genes in different parts of the body. They also compared the levels of these messages in the blood to what's happening inside brain cells grown in the lab.
They deduced that changes in these messages in the blood matched up with changes happening inside the brain cells.
The ultimate goal of this research is to make a test that doctors can use to check for signs of mental health problems just by taking a small blood sample.
This could help doctors catch these issues early and prevent bad outcomes. In the future, they also hope to use similar methods to develop tests for other brain-related conditions like autism.
“We only detected placenta-specific EVs during the pregnancy, and not after birth. This was a proof of concept, that we can detect EVs that are coming from a specific tissue or organ,” explained Sarven Sabunciyan, Ph.D., an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and the paper’s senior author.
Sabunciyan expressed in the statement that the goal is to develop a simple blood test to detect changes such as higher or lower levels of blood EV mRNAs directly linked to changes in the brain associated with mental disorders without having access to the brain itself.
“The availability of such blood tests could enable detection of early signs of mental health emergencies, such as suicidal behavior,” added Sabunciyan.
“The ability to identify patients who are at risk of having a psychiatric episode would enable the care team to intervene and possibly prevent negative outcomes.”
The study was published in the journal–Molecular Psychiatry on January 11.
