Interesting because it is possible to increase GABA, both nutritionally and with some anti-epileptic drugs.....
The Karolinska Schizophrenia Project (KaSP) brings together researchers from a number of different scientific disciplines to build up a comprehensive picture of the disease mechanisms and to discover new targets for drug therapy. Patients with an acute first-episode psychosis are recruited and undergo extensive tests and investigations. Cognitive function, genetic variation, biochemical anomalies as well as brain structure and function are analysed using the latest techniques and then compared with healthy peers.
The first results from the project are now presented in two studies published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. One of the studies shows that patients with newly debuted schizophrenia have lower levels of the neurotransmitter GABA in their cerebrospinal fluid than healthy people and that the lower the concentration of GABA the more serious their symptoms are.
GABA is involved in most brain functions and along with glutamate it accounts for almost 90 per cent of all signal transmission. While glutamate stimulates brain activity, GABA inhibits it, and the two neurotransmitters interact with each other.