Skewing of the antibody repertoire in cerebrospinal fluid B cells from healthy controls and patients with schizophrenia

Autoantibodies play a role in the etiology of some neuropsychiatric disorders. To address the possibility that B cells and their antibodies may be involved in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, we examined B cells in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and peripheral blood (PB) of 4 schizophrenic patients (SP) and 4 healthy control (HC) volunteers by analyzing immunoglobulin VH gene usage. All CSF samples contained measurable levels of B cells. We found for both SP and HC, CSF B cells represented a select subset of, and were not the same as, B cells in PB. Moreover, we found statistically significant differences in antibodies generated by CSF B cells in SP compared to CSF B cells in HC. Although binding characteristics of CSF SP-associated B cell antibodies is unknown, the study number is small, and pathophysiology has not been established, these results suggest the value of focusing further study on the distinctly separate population of CSF B cells in SP.