Could hair help us diagnose mental illness?
We’re incredibly thankful to live in a world where mental illness is now both recognized and accepted, but there’s still a long way to go when it comes to diagnosing and treating the most common of mental health issues. One of the most mysterious diseases for scientists and medical professionals today is schizophrenia. There has been a fair bit of positive progress made in researching the illness over the past ten years, but not enough for us to be anywhere near close to understanding how it works.
Schizophrenia is a long-term mental disorder that causes a breakdown in the link between thought, emotion, and behaviour, which often results in a skewed perception, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships, and a sense of mental disintegration. At the moment, the only way to diagnose schizophrenia is by behavioural observation, and it’s often difficult to detect the condition through this alone. It’s thought that genetics, environment, and altered brain chemistry and structure might be factors leading to schizophrenia, but as of yet there is no known definitive cause.
A new study published in EMBO Molecular Medicine, however, suggests that we might now be able to diagnose schizophrenia by examining human hair. Here’s where things get a bit technical: scientists think that an enzyme that helps to produce hydrogen sulphide in the brain, which also leaves a trace in human hair, might be a marker for schizophrenia even before a person starts to display symptoms.
As reported by Medical News Today, doctors in the study already knew of a certain behavioural marker of schizophrenia called prepulse inhibition. In short, here’s an explanation:
Most of us would respond to a sudden loud noise with a jump. However, if we were to hear a smaller short noise – or prepulse – just before, the bigger noise would be less startling. That’s because the prepulse inhibits the startle response. People with schizophrenia react differently, though: their response is equally as startled to a sudden loud noise as when there’s a prepulse.
With this in mind, doctors carried out a study on mice with different levels of the prepulse inhibition. This is where they discovered the enzyme, Mpst, which we now know to be a marker for schizophrenia. They found that mice with a low prepulse inhibition had much higher levels of Mpst. These mice also had higher levels of hydrogen sulphide in their brains, which is already linked to schizophrenia. This made it pretty clear that higher levels of Mpst in the brain were linked with schizophrenia.
Finally, scientists were ready to test their theory by examining the hair follicles of people with and without schizophrenia. They found that the people with schizophrenia had higher levels of a protein that codes for Mpst in their hair. Without intending to, they had formulated a new way of diagnosing schizophrenia without relying on behavioural observation, or examining brain tissue cells (which is obviously difficult to do in live patients).
This research is particularly promising because it’s thought that eventually, the new findings could help scientists to produce a new class of drugs for schizophrenia. At the moment, the treatments on offer are not always effective, and often come with an abundance of unsavoury side effects. It leads us to wonder how else examining follicles may be able to help out in the medical industry where it isn’t already.
It’s not the first time that our hair has been speculated for its use in diagnosing mental illness, either. One 2019 study found that it may be possible to diagnose depression in teenagers using just a lock of hair as a sample. In the study, scientists examined the levels of cortisol, a well-known stress hormone, in a number of participants’ hair samples. They found that not only did high cortisol levels link to a higher likelihood of depression, but there was also a connection between low cortisol levels and mental health struggles.
If this isn’t proof of how important hair can be in helping scientists to progress in vital research, we don’t know what is. Hopefully, this is a positive sign that we’re on the right track to understanding schizophrenia and ultimately being able to treat the illness, and other common mental illnesses, successfully.