Tag : Placenta

Washington: A recent study headed by the Lieber Institute for Brain Development found that more than 100 genes linked to the risk of schizophrenia appear to induce disease owing to their activity in the placenta rather than the developing brain. For nearly a century, scientists concluded that genes for schizophrenia risk were mostly, if not entirely, concerned with the brain. However, new study published in Nature Communications has discovered that the placenta plays a considerably larger role in the development of sickness than previously thought. "The secret of the genetics of schizophrenia has been hiding in plain sight--the placenta, the critical organ in supporting prenatal development, launches the developmental trajectory of risk," says Daniel Weinberger, M.D., senior author of the paper and Director and CEO of the Lieber Institute for Brain Development, located on the Johns Hopkins medical campus in Baltimore. "The commonly shared view on the causes of schizophrenia is that genetic and environmental risk factors play a role directly and only in the brain, but these latest results show that placenta health is also critical." The researchers discovered that schizophrenia genes alter the placenta's ability to monitor nutrients in the mother's circulation, including oxygen, and exchange nutrients according on what it discovers. The schizophrenia risk genes are more weakly expressed in the placental cells termed trophoblasts, which constitute the core of this maternal-fetal nutrition exchange, adversely compromising the placenta's role in feeding the growing foetus. The paper also identifies several genes in the placenta that are causative factors for diabetes, bipolar disorder, depression, autism and attention deficit hyperactivity ...