Higher levels of autofluorescence in schizophrenia patient-derived cells and its clinical correlations

Schizophrenia is a complex neuropsychiatric disorder and the diagnosis of schizophrenia is mainly based on signs and symptoms. A biomarker based on the pathology or correlated with the biological disease progress of schizophrenia may improve the diagnosis of schizophrenia and help to monitor drug responses of antipsychotic medications. To look for molecular biomarkers for schizophrenia, we measured the levels of autofluorescence in lymphoblasts and olfactory cells from schizophrenia patients, and analyzed the correlations between autofluorescence levels and the phenotypic evaluations of the same individuals. We found that the levels of autofluorescence are higher in cells from both drug-naive and chronic schizophrenia patients, and this increase can be reversed by antipsychotic treatment. The subjects with higher autofluorescence have deficits in a specific cognitive domain, fluency. These results indicate that autofluorescence is a possible molecular biomarker for schizophrenia. By monitoring this molecular biomarker in blood cells which are easily accessed in clinical settings along the course of the disease, early diagnosis and different treatment decisions may be applied in the future to lead to better patient outcomes.