Health | Johns Hopkins researchers make progress in…
Johns Hopkins researchers say they’re getting closer to developing a blood test that would identify changes in the brain associated with psychiatric and neurological disorders — an advancement that could enable doctors to detect the early signs of mental health emergencies.
In a study published last month in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Molecular Psychiatry, researchers focused on the potential of particles called extracellular vesicles to provide a window into what’s happening inside a person’s brain.
Sarven Sabunciyan, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the paper’s senior author, compared them to rafts that travel between cells. They sometimes carry messenger RNA — a type of molecule also called mRNA that contains the instructions for how cells should make proteins.
The study, led by the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, was inspired by a previous study by Johns Hopkins researchers, Johns Hopkins Medicine said in a news release Thursday. That study found that communication between cells is altered in pregnant women who go on to develop postpartum depression after they give birth.
