Neurons in the nose could be the key to early, fast, and
accurate diagnosis, says a TAU researcher
A debilitating mental illness, schizophrenia can be
difficult to diagnose. Because physiological evidence confirming the disease
can only be gathered from the brain during an autopsy, mental health
professionals have had to rely on a battery of psychological evaluations to
diagnose their patients.
Now, Dr. Noam Shomron and Prof. Ruth Navon of Tel Aviv
University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine, together with PhD student Eyal Mor
from Dr. Shomron's lab and Prof. Akira Sawa of Johns Hopkins Hospital in
Baltimore, Maryland, have discovered a method for physical diagnosis — by
collecting tissue from the nose through a simple biopsy. Surprisingly,
collecting and sequencing neurons from the nose may lead to "more
sure-fire" diagnostic capabilities than ever before, Dr. Shomron says.