Researchers create schizophrenic mice

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Scientists have genetically engineered mice that develop the physical and psychological characteristics of schizophrenia, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

They said the finding will help improve understanding of the disease and help develop drugs to treat it.

"Our goal is trying to identify a strategy that may cure the pathophysiology of schizophrenia," said Dr. Akira Sawa of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, whose work appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Current animal research on schizophrenia has relied on drugs to create the delusions, mood changes and paranoia that characterize this brain disorder.

Engineering animals to develop schizophrenia will help researchers better understand the disease, which affects about 1 percent of the world's population.

Sawa said the animals can be used to explore how external factors like stress or viruses may aggravate symptoms.

But animal rights groups said such experiments are cruel and unlikely to yield results.

"Of all the experiments on animals, the least justifiable are the psychological experiments because human mental disease is such a uniquely human feature," said Jessica Sandler of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.