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[deleted] t1_j82ualc wrote

[deleted]

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Corsair4 t1_j8343yd wrote

>someone without schizophrenia to correctly perceive schizophrenia.

This has little to do with bias, and more to do with the fluid nature and standards we use to diagnose these conditions. If you look at a DSM or similar diagnostic catalog, over the years, you'll notice that the criteria for diagnoses change. This is a result of learning more about the condition - but at the end of the day, there isn't a simple, mechanistic diagnosis for most mental pathologies.

In the case of schizophrenia, we can't say If you have a protein level <X, you have schizophrenia. It comes down to a number of subjective symptoms, and how the patient experiences them. That's not bias, that's simply not having a clear cut definition for a condition.

Combine this with the fact that many conditions that are considered distinct have similar or overlapping symptom profiles, despite having potentially different causes and potentially different responses to therapeutic strategies.

Emotional bias in research is not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that defining a clear cut mechanistic cause for these conditions is exceptionally difficult.

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thedogbreathvariatio OP t1_j82ueu4 wrote

What does this mean in the context of drug discovery and design?

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Corsair4 t1_j834f48 wrote

It doesn't.

Before any sort of experimental drug proceeds to clinical trials, it needs to have robust preclinical data showing A) Safety in animal models and B) some functional data suggesting it would have efficacy in humans. Primary research into neurological conditions and mental pathologies is limited by model systems and the measurements we can take.

The most detailed measurements in neuroscience are terminal, invasive procedures. For obvious reasons, we do not do these in humans. So we have to use a animal model - typically a rodent of some sort. But there are enormous species to species differences that make assessing model systems very difficult.

Consider the primary symptoms of schizophrenia in a human; psychosis, delusions, apathy and others. How do you assess if a mouse or rat is actually experiencing auditory hallucinations? By what criteria can you examine a mouse model, and determine if it is undergoing psychosis? If my hypothesis is that psychosis is caused by X deviation in Y protein, I first need to have an accurate animal model for psychosis. Or I could look at the animal first, and then look at humans after, but that has it's own challenges.

The biggest limits on research in mental pathologies is developing accurate mechanistic causes for conditions such as schizophrenia. Once you have a clear idea on what the problem is - protein expression, inappropriate excitability, etc - you can far more accurately develop new therapeutic drugs, or repurpose old drugs.

It has little to do with emotional bias in research, and far more to do with technical limitations in what data we can actually gather.

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