Potential drug targets and treatment of schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is one of the most prevalent chronic psychiatric disorders that affect 1% of the world’s population. Despite its societal burden, pathophysiology of schizophrenia remains poorly understood. Currently available drugs predominantly control positive symptoms, and often have no or poor control on negative and related cognitive symptoms, which strongly affect functional outcome in schizophrenia. The present article is an attempt to provide a critical review of recent hypothesis to understand pathophysiology of schizophrenia and to highlight exploitable molecular drug targets other than dopaminergic systems to treat and manage schizophrenia effectively.