Schizophrenia: GABA Alterations in the Cerebellum Too?

Schizophrenia has been associated with dysfunction in specific subsets of interneurons that express gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). In addition to prefrontal cortical deficits in GABA signaling, GABA-related deficiencies have been described in the limbic system and, to a lesser extent, in the cerebellum in patients with schizophrenia.

These investigators further investigated alterations in cerebellar gene expression as these relate to decreases in substances that boost GABA release. They examined lateral cerebellar hemisphere tissue taken postmortem from the brains of 13 individuals who had had schizophrenia and 13 comparison subjects. The investigators used quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction to measure mRNA levels of several G…