Metabolic Signatures and Biomarkers

Schizophrenia (SCH) is a devastating mental disease that affects the human population
worldwide with an incidence of about 1%. Most individuals with this illness benefit from
long-term pharmacotherapy, however, the therapeutic effects of antipsychotic treatment are
inconsistent, incomplete, and often countered by significant side-effects associated with
long-term physical morbidity (e.g., tardive dyskinesia, obesity, hyperglycemia,
hyperlipidemia. Metabolomics is a powerful new technology that provides a snap shot of
biochemical pathways at a particular point in time. It has been earmarked as an important
area to develop under the NIH roadmap initiative. We plan to use this platform to map
biochemical signatures in unmedicated schizophrenic patients prior to and 4 weeks post
treatment with the antipsychotic drug aripiprazole and compare that to lipid perturbations
induced by risperidone. These drugs have inherently different risk for metabolic adverse
effects and patients respond to them differently. Metabolic signatures for the drugs capture
significant biochemical information that could explain part of the basis for varied drug
response within individuals and will highlight pathways implicated in drug action and in
disease pathogenesis possibly enabling new drug design strategies

Inclusion Criteria:

- Age 18-60 years

- Diagnosis of schizophrenia

- Actively psychotic

- No more than a single dose of antipsychotic in the preceeding 2 weeks

Exclusion Criteria:

- Mental retardation, epilespy or history of head trauma

- Substance use disorder that explains the majority of the psychopathology

- Pregnant or lactating females