A Potential Biomarker for Predicting Schizophrenia: Metallothionein-1

Abstract

It has been thought that oxidative damage may occur in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia; metallothioneins (MT) have strong antioxidant functions. In this study, we aimed to measure MT-1 levels in schizophrenia patients. A total of 52 patients diagnosed with schizophrenia and 38 healthy controls were included in the study. Serum MT-1 concentrations were measured using the Human Metallothionein-1 ELISA Kit. In addition, Cu and Zn levels were measured. PANSS (Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale) was used to determine the disease severity of patients with schizophrenia. The MT-1 levels of the schizophrenia group were lower than the MT-1 levels of the control group. When the correlation analyses were examined, a positive correlation was found between MT-1 and illness duration and Cu/Zn. A negative correlation was found between MT-1 levels and PANSS total scores and PANSS positive scores. In the regression analysis, it was seen that the decrease in MT-1 levels poses a risk for schizophrenia. It was observed that a decrease of 1 ng/mL in MT-1 levels increased the risk of schizophrenia 1.115 times. The low concentration of MT-1 is likely to cause a deficiency in antioxidant defense in patients with schizophrenia. MT-1 may be a useful biomarker for predicting schizophrenia.

Transcriptional and neurochemical signatures of cerebral blood flow alterations in schizophrenia and the clinical high-risk state for psychosis

“…We did not find significant pathway enrichments for the CHR-T rCBF phenotype. Previous work directly corroborating some of these genes and/or pathways in SSD has shown that, for example, levels of metallothionein MT-1 correlate negatively with psychotic symptom scores potentially serving as a potential biomarker for psychotic symptoms 73 . Retinoid dysregulation has also been implicated in schizophrenia 74,75 , and genes falling into enriched vitamin-/ retinoid-linked metabolic pathways, such as retinoid transporters APOE and TTR, and ApoE receptor LRP10, are deregulated in schizophrenia [76][77][78] .…”

“…Many genes annotated to enriched pathways are also associated with cell-types and functions discussed above. For example, metallothioneins are enriched in astrocytes and are involved in binding and defence against oxidative damage 73 , and multiple genes involved in retinoid metabolism are more highly expressed in astrocytes, microglia and VLMCs. Our findings complement previous imaging transcriptomics work observing similar enrichment of genes upregulated in schizophrenia in regions with reduced morphometric similarity between cases and controls 16 .…”