Local researchers are claiming they can make people with schizophrenia better, though they don't fully understand the effects the medication has on the brain.
Two institutes are conducting a long-term project that seeks to analyse structural brain changes in subjects suffering from brain diseases such as schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and bipolar disorder
The Cape University's Brain Imaging Centre (CUBIC) has partnered with the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) in the first study of schizophrenia.
In the study, the CUBIC aims to assess structural brain changes that occur after the first episode of the disease. The institute says the relationship between these changes and the course and outcome of the illness is evaluated by means of a subcortical volume analysis using the Freesurfer Programme running on the CHPC's Sun Nehalem system.
The second study of schizophrenia aims to compare structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) changes during acute treatment with two kinds of treatment, notably an atypical and a conventional anti-psychotic, and to evaluate the relationship between these changes and treatment response.
The next study involves scanning of subjects with OCD and trichotillomania (TTM) - self-induced and recurrent loss of hair - following an anti-depressant or placebo challenge.
Enabled by the CHPC, the CUBIC says it is continuously measuring the growth and shrinkage of the brain's grey matter and volumes of the subcortical areas, to determine whether there is a difference in the size of the brain. “The next phase of the study will be to understand why there is such a difference and what it means,” says Dr St'efan du Plessis, research scientist for CUBIC.
All these studies require the simulation and monitoring of the brain of each subject. On a conventional machine, the reconstruction of one brain takes about 24 hours.
High performance computing continues to act as a cardinal catalyst in health sciences research and many other fields, notes du Plessis. Where studies took years to yield results in the past, research can now be achieved in a fraction of the time, making possible savings not only in time and financial resources, but even of lives, he adds.
“It's never easy using a high performance system. It has, however, proven essential in our current neuro-imaging research and will likely prove to be so in the future as well, as new algorithms are developed in exploring the brain's structure and its associated pathologies.”
According to Dr Nyembue Jean-Bosco Kazadi from the University of Witwatersrand, schizophrenia is a chronic and disabling illness that affects approximately 1% of the world's population. “It is often accompanied by relapse even while on treatment,” he says.
He notes that relapse rates vary from 50% to 92% and are similar in developed and developing countries, despite the former having well-established mental health services. “Among South Africans, there are few published data regarding the prevalence and factors associated with relapses,” he adds.
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