Fingerprints can predict the risk of schizophrenia

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An algorithm developed by Spanish researchers is capable of predicting the risk of a person suffering from schizophrenia with 70% accuracy by analyzing their fingerprints on three fingers of the left hand.

Fingerprints can predict the risk of schizophrenia

Diagnosis of schizophrenia could be improved by a simple, non-invasive test that relies on an algorithm that analyzes an individual’s fingerprints and has shown 70% reliability in preliminary trials in identifying people at risk of developing schizophrenia. suffer from this mental disorder.

Currently, to diagnose schizophrenia it is necessary to perform a physical examination and a psychiatric evaluation of the patient, analysis and imaging tests such as nuclear magnetic resonance or computerized axial tomography (CT), and differentiate it from other mental health problems such as bipolar disorder, which delays the start of treatment.

Among the causes of schizophrenia, genetic predisposition stands out (it is estimated that it has a weight of 80% of the disease), since if a relative has been diagnosed with the disorder there is a greater probability of suffering from it. Environmental factors during pregnancy or the individual’s social and family environment may also influence its appearance.

The test that analyzes fingerprints would be indicated for people who begin to manifest symptoms of schizophrenia or suffer a first psychotic episode, and those with significant genetic risk

The new diagnostic technique has been developed by researchers from the Research Foundation of the Sisters Hospitallers Congregation (Fidmag), which has a network of mental health centers throughout Spain, and from CIBER Mental Health (Cibersam). These scientists thought that it was possible that schizophrenia left marks in the fingerprints, since the dermatoglyphic patterns with which we are born do not change throughout our lives and that is why they are used in the registration and official identification of citizens.

The Fidmag and Cibersam researchers used artificial intelligence, specifically deep learning, to develop several advanced algorithms that would allow them to identify fingerprint patterns of patients with schizophrenia and healthy people, and tested them until they found the most effective one, which was based on three fingers (thumb, index and middle) of the left hand.

Early diagnosis of schizophrenia in a population at risk

The study has been published in Schizophrenia Bulletin, and it analyzed the fingerprints of around 1,500 people; 600 of them with schizophrenia and 850 healthy people who served as a control group. In this way, the algorithm was validated in a preliminary way, which reaches a reliability of 70% identifying fingerprints of individuals at risk of schizophrenia and fingerprints of healthy people.

Raymond Salvador, principal investigator and biologist who has developed the algorithm, has reported at a press conference at the San Rafael Hospital in Barcelona (of the same religious order), together with the psychologist and postdoctoral researcher María Ángeles García León, that the test consists of in scanning the fingers of patients to subsequently clean the image (the prints may have small cuts) and process it through the algorithm, so that it determines the probabilities of suffering from the disease by analyzing highly complex patterns.

Salvador has explained that the algorithm is “like a black box, which detects the areas of the footprint with information on disease risk. The algorithm is clever enough to know where the information about the disease is.” And he has stressed that “it is not an absolute tool, but it can help. It has a 30% error. In his opinion, 70% success is “the maximum we can aspire to”.

The study authors believe the results confirm that the test is a potential risk marker for schizophrenia. In addition, as they have pointed out, the tool is easy to use, since it only requires a small device to collect the fingerprint image and a computer or a mobile phone, and it is reliable to detect the risk of immediate disease or its appearance in the future. However, they have insisted that “it has just come out of the oven” and it is necessary to define issues that include bioethics, before implanting it in clinical practice.

They have ruled out that it is used for population screening (identifying people at risk among the healthy population with no family history of the disorder), and they explain that it would be indicated for two specific groups: people who have started to manifest symptoms of schizophrenia or who go to emergencies with a first psychotic episode, and individuals at significant genetic risk.

The researchers explained at the press conference that identifying people at risk of schizophrenia would improve their prognosis and the course of the disease because early diagnosis will be followed by early and more personalized treatment. The disease manifests itself with a first psychotic episode after adolescence, generally between 20 and 25 years of age, but its origin is in the development of the fetal brain in the womb, or in the first years of life.

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