The eyes may be the window to our souls, but they are also providing scientists with insights to workings of our brains.
A new study, led by the University of Zurich, has shown that evidence of genetic susceptibility to schizophrenia can be found in the retina.
Lead author and postdoctoral researcher Finn Rabe said the finding could help improve the early detection of the disorder.
Dr Rabe said the retina was part of the central nervous system and therefore a direct extension of the brain.
“This is why changes in the brain could potentially also be detected in our eyes,” he said.
Dr Rabe said their study examined whether changes in nerve connections were linked to a genetic risk for schizophrenia, as impaired neural information processing we one of the main characteristics of the disorder.
He said previous studies suggested that schizophrenia not only reduced the volume of grey matter in the brains of those affected, but that it also led to loss of retinal tissue.
“To investigate whether the risk of developing schizophrenia has an effect on the central nervous system, we examined tens of thousands of healthy individuals (and) then calculated polygenic risk scores for each individual.”
Dr Rabe said the study showed that higher genetic susceptibility to schizophrenia was indeed associated with thinner retinas.
“However, the effects are small and can only be reliably demonstrated in large-scale studies.”
He said one of the study’s findings was that, unlike changes in the brain, changes in the retina were easy to detect using non-invasive and inexpensive retinal measurements.
“Our study shows the potential of using optical coherence tomography in clinical practice.”
Read the full study: Genetic susceptibility to schizophrenia through neuroinflammatory pathways associated with retinal thinness.
