Schizophrenia, the devastating mental illness characterized by delusions, hallucinations or disorganized thoughts, afflicts about 1 percent of the population, with onset typically in late adolescence. Its causes are still not well understood, and for the past 50 years, antipsychotic medication has remained the treatment of choice. But an increasing number of studies find abnormalities in inflammation and oxidation in affected individuals.

Recently, an international group of scientists have summed up this emerging field in a special issue of Schizophrenia Research. Edited by Johns Hopkins psychiatrists Akira Sawa and Thomas W. Sedlak, the journal highlights the wide ramifications of these discoveries. While risk of schizophrenia has been tied to a variety of factors, including genetics, brain injury, drug use and prenatal infections, the emerging insights on inflammatory alterations may be a common thread and lead to new treatments for this pernicious malady.

Johns Hopkins’ contributors to this effort include Akira Sawa, William Eaton, Mikhail Pletnikov, Crystal Watkins, Emily Severance, Robert Yolken, Sarah Andrews and Thomas Sedlak.