Miquel Bosch and Andrés Ozaita have launched this study to determine if samples collected for blood analyses will work to obtain biomarkers for diagnosis and progression of neurological disorders such as autism.

“Material from the brain circulates regularly in the blood. This material carries different information about the genetics, epigenetics and physiological state of the cells from which they come,” Bosch explains. Since neurons produce materials that reach the blood, the two researchers believe that blood could become a source of information about what is happening in the brain of people with neurological dysfunction, thus avoiding the need for invasive techniques.

The study, which received funding from La Marató de TV3 focused on mental health research, aims to verify if these blood biomarkers could be indicators of changes in neuron physiology in people with intellectual disabilities, such as people on the autism spectrum, to aid in the diagnosis and progression of the disorder.

In the initial phase of the project, researchers will analyse blood samples from transgenic rodents with this genetic abnormality, to determine if the molecular changes observed in the rat brains match the biological material obtained from their blood.

This is the first time that the use of circulating material in blood as a source of biomarkers for mental diseases has been studied and, as Miquel Bosch and Andrés Ozaita point out, “this system could be applied to any illness, to neurological and psychiatric illnesses, as well as to mental illnesses, while providing valuable tools to accelerate biomedical research in these pathologies, avoiding the need to access a patient’s brain in an invasive way.”