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ReplyDeleteThe "magic bullet" approach when selecting drug targets don't apply to a lot of diseases that aren't caused by a single gene mutation. This is very true for schizophrenia and I think your post highlights just how difficult it is to treat schizophrenia without tipping the scales on the positive and negative symptoms. According to this article, the most effective antipsychotic drugs are ones that have multiple targets, not just a single receptor but even a whole class of them (Kondej et al., 2018). Although there is still a lot to uncover regarding the mechanisms of schizophrenia, I think the new approach of finding multiple targets is a great way to treat multifactorial diseases. Beyond the dopamine hypothesis, there is also evidence of serotonin receptor involvement and some antipsychotic medications in the market are dopamine and serotonin receptor antagonists (Kondej et al., 2018).
DeleteKondej, M., Stępnicki, P., & Kaczor, A. A. (2018). Multi-target approach for Drug Discovery Against Schizophrenia. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 19(10), 3105. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms19103105