The $175,000 grant from the Sidney R. Baer Jr. Foundation will help Dr. Gallitano research and develop a biologically-based diagnostic that could help determine if a patient has schizophrenia or some subtype of the disorder.
“No biological test exists to diagnose a mental illness such as schizophrenia or post-traumatic stress disorder,” Dr. Gallitano told EurekAlert.com “We’ve got a huge challenge in trying to find the causes of an illness that is poorly defined, that probably encompasses multiple illnesses that change over time and that is not diagnosable with any test.”
Dr. Gallitano leads a laboratory at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix that investigates a family of genes in the brain that could connect psychiatric illness with environmental factors.
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