SAN ANTONIO – Schizophrenia is a difficult mental disorder that causes a person to lose touch with reality.
Because the symptoms can be so severe, it's treated with strong drugs, but they have side effects.
A San Antonio scientist has unveiled a different approach that may be a game-changer.
"When people hear schizophrenia or psychosis, they immediately go to what they see in movies, the quote, unquote crazy person and that's not what schizophrenia is," said Daniel Lodge, associate professor at UT Health San Antonio.
Scientists believe schizophrenia starts in utero, but the symptoms, such as hallucinations, paranoia and social withdrawal, don't appear until a person is in their teens.
"Like I was hearing voices. I was seeing things, honestly I thought everybody heard voices," Fonda White said.
White said he saw dark, shadowy figures, scary to a small child. In many ways, it was like a horror movie. Now he's a peer specialist taking medications.
"The problem with these drugs is that they have side effects," Lodge said.
Side effects include weight gain, dizziness, drowsiness, nausea and constipation, which is why researchers are studying stem cells in the brain that target the root cause.
Lodge experimented with rodents and discovered that inserting stem cells into the brains of the control group improved their cognitive function. And at the end of a long research road, researchers say stem cell treatments could have a tremendous effect on people, such as White, with a better quality of life.
"This is very powerful because not only is it building their ability to become independent, but also to achieve their dreams, the things they want to do in life," said Marina Robertson, a licensed professional counselor.
"If anybody's going through it or you feel like somebody's having symptoms or something like that, definitely help them. Don't lose hope on it," White said.
Lodge hopes his research leads to a stem cell treatment that would be administered to patients in pill form. Taking this therapy from the lab to clinic will take at least 10 years.