Increasing

Background: Individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) tend to have lower than average brain myelin content. Gene-set analyses suggest that aberrant oligodendrocyte (OL) development is an underlying cause of this abnormality. Previously, we observed that cells from patients with SZ, reprogrammed to neural lines, had substantially reduced OL production. Furthermore, OLs produced in culture correlated strongly with myelin content observed in the brains of the donors of the lines. In the current study, we tested whether increasing expression of Methods: Fibroblasts from 6 participants with SZ and 6 healthy control participants were reprogrammed to neural lines. Quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reactions were run to determine the expression of Results: Conclusions: Evidence from these studies, together with previous results, suggests that reduced SOX10 is a critical determinant of deficient OL production and, thereby, a contributing determinant of abnormal brain myelination in SZ. This abnormality could be a target for therapeutic interventions.