Abstract
Schizophrenia is a complex trait disorder with serious neurocognitive dysfunctions. As a neuropsychiatric disease with heterogeneous properties and various clinical manifestations, schizophrenia is influenced by many factors including gene–environment interactions and epigenetic elements. Among all of the factors, the immune system is especially important as demonstrated by the anti-inflammatory therapies. Chronic stress has been closely linked to immune responses that may enhance the levels of proinflammatory cytokines, a significant feature among schizophrenia patients. The dynamical interactions among the immune, endocrine, and nervous systems via cytokines, hormones, and neurotransmitters may be the essential mechanisms in schizophrenia with etiological implications. Neurotransmitters such as dopamine (DA) may have the key roles in bridging the interactions between the nervous and the immune systems. The functions of multiple elements in the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal–gonadal (HPAG) axis have been correlated to schizophrenia. The elucidation of these pathways is critical in psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) research as the common inflammatory networks may be involved in the pathological mechanisms of both depression and schizophrenia. Such understanding may contribute to patient stratification and the development of strategies in personalized, systems, and dynamical medicine.
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Yan, Q. (2016). Psychoneuroimmunology of Schizophrenia. In: Psychoneuroimmunology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45111-4_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45111-4_7
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