New Research to Help Trials for Schizophrenia Drugs, Sydney University Study

CLINICAL trials of drugs once considered dangerous in the treatment of schizophrenia will now more readily be given the go ahead, one of Australia's most prominent psychiatrists says, thanks to significant new research that has shown the brains of schizophrenics may be under immune system attack. Although researchers have suspected a link between immune function and schizophrenia, a lack of evidence meant it was difficult to get funding to trial immune-system suppressing drugs on schizophrenic patients, said the executive director of Sydney University's Brain and Mind Research Institute, Ian Hickie.