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Comment by mdevere | Hacker News Reader

Very strange how HN elevates news about random drug candidates at very early stages of development.

There is a very active landscape of people developing/validating 'biomarkers' for neurological and psychiatric disorders and developing drugs specifically for those populations with the biomarker present; this news is far from extraordinary.

The real news is when these reach FDA approval.

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Identifying a biomarker for a psychological condition, particularly one like schizophrenia which is hugely disruptive for individuals affected and has a seemingly random onset around early adulthood, is significant in its own right even if it doesn’t lead to a pharmaceutical intervention. It could help identify new risk factors, potential non-pharmaceutical interventions like life style changes, and maybe even identify people who are at risk of developing schizophrenia and preparing them for its onset before their first hallucination and avoiding a downward spiral.

Disproportionately many geeks have very strong opinions about psychiatry, probably because we have a lot of people who consider themselves neurodivergent, as well as plenty of folks who experiment with drugs.

Absolutely nothing strange about following research, and sharing and discussing has nothing to do with elevating.

What is actually weird is how often users here makes it an issue when research papers on novel drugs are shared here.

Given how debilitating schizophrenia can be, and how compromised the current treatments are - hey, you don't mind making uncontrollable strange expressions on your face forever, do you? - things like this give hope, even if it's just a little bit.

You are right: it is, thankfully, no longer extraordinary on a per-biomarker basis.

As yet another step in mapping the space of biomarkers for diseases, it is noteworthy and worth a thumbs-up somewhere in the universe.

Why is it noteworthy on HN? I think it is because HN likes optimistic stories about scientific progress on lots of dimensions.

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