On the profiling of autoantibodies in psychiatric disorders

Sammanfattning: There is a great need to increase our understanding of diseases affecting the brain and their underlying pathogenic mechanisms. To address this need, the work presented in this thesis applied affinity based proteomic techniques to profile proteins, and to investigate protein profiles and the autoantibody repertoire in brain related disorders. Studies included in this thesis cover traumatic brain injuries, first-episode psychosis, schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorders. Paper I describes the profiling of rat serum samples of a traumatic brain injury model to increase the understanding of injury related protein markers and their potential role in patient outcome. Changes in protein profiles over time were characterized as well as potential injury markers related to oxygen intake. Paper II-IV describe the use of protein fragment-based arrays to investigate potential pathogenic autoantibodies associated to the disease. In Paper II possible predictive autoantibodies for the development of schizophrenia were identified, Paper III identified probable brain reactive autoantibodies in schizophrenia patients and Paper IV described the exploration of autoantibodies which might have an association to obsessive-compulsive disorder. Further characterization of these autoantibody repertoires in psychiatric disorders and future efforts could increase our understanding of their role in the associated diseases. Taken together, this work provides the basis for future research in the search for novel disease associated proteins and autoantibody profiles in brain related disorders. An increased understanding and additional diagnostic or prognostic markers of these disorders would be beneficial for both researchers and patients.