Future mental health care may include diagnosis via brain scan and computer algorithm

Computer IDs differences in brains of patients with schizophrenia or autism

From the August 20, 2020 news release from the University of Tokyo

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A multidisciplinary team of medical and machine learning experts trained their computer algorithm using MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) brain scans of 206 Japanese adults, a combination of patients already diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder or schizophrenia, individuals considered high risk for schizophrenia and those who experienced their first instance of psychosis, as well as neurotypical people with no mental health concerns. All of the volunteers with autism were men, but there was a roughly equal number of male and female volunteers in the other groups.

Machine learning uses statistics to find patterns in large amounts of data. These programs find similarities within groups and differences between groups that occur too often to be easily dismissed as coincidence. This study used six different algorithms to distinguish between the different MRI images of the patient groups.

The algorithm used in this study learned to associate different psychiatric diagnoses with variations in the thickness, surface area or volume of areas of the brain in MRI images. It is not yet known why any physical difference in the brain is often found with a specific mental health condition.”

Read the entire news release here

Patients taking opioids produce antibodies that may hinder anti-opioid vaccine

From the August 17, 2020 news release at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

“University of Wisconsin–Madison scientists have discovered that a majority of people they tested who were taking opioid painkillers for chronic back pain produced antibodies against the drugs that may contribute to some of the negative side effects of long-term opioid use.”
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…”For decades, researchers have understood that the immune system can produce antibodies against psychoactive drugs under the right conditions. While the chemicals themselves are too small for the immune system to recognize, they can permanently bind to large proteins in the blood, which can then trigger an immune response.”…

Read the entire article here

…”If a vaccine can produce antibodies capable of neutralizing the drugs, it could help people combat addiction by reducing the pleasurable feelings the drugs produce in the brain. Past trials of vaccines against nicotine or cocaine have had limited success, in part because of individual differences in how the immune system produces antibodies.”…

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Related article & 3 minute video
Negative side effects of opioids could be coming from users’ own immune systems (video) (American Chemical Society, August 17, 2020)

This video, in 3 minutes, summarizes the University of Madison-Wisconsin article