 |
|
|
Brain Phospholipid Composition in Schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a devastating mental illness for which there is no cure. The illness has about a 1% incidence worldwide. Although schizophrenia is clearly a brain disorder, its ultimate cause is not known. Based on studies of blood cells, it has been suggested that schizophrenia arises from cell membrane abnormalities due to changes in phospholipid composition in the brain. Phospholipids are the molecules that constitute a large portion of the cell membrane (Figure 1). Since the phospholipid composition of brain cannot be studied in living persons, it is necessary to use postmortem brain samples.  Figure 1. Basic phospholipid structure. R1 and R2 are fatty acid side chains. X is the headgroup for the phospholipids phosphatidic acid (PA), phosphatidylethanolamine (PE), phosphatidylcholine (PC), and phosphatidylgycerol (PG).
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
