A consensus exists that schizophrenia is not a single disease, but the final pathway of a variety of still unknown neurobiological derangements. Many patients might have an autoimmune etiology, as suggested by several lines of evidence. First, schizophrenia typically begins in adolescence or early adulthood and courses with remissions and exacerbations. Second, it shares age of onset and psychiatric symptoms with a disorder caused by autoantibodies against the NMDA receptor, known to be downregulated in schizophrenia. Third, several of the leading risk genes associated with schizophrenia in genome-wide association studies code for proteins critical for immunity.  

In an interim, blinded analysis of 18 patients (age 25.5 ± 4.1 years, 8 women) in both treatment arms who had a 3 month follow up after the second ocrelizumab infusion, results are as follows:

The 39.9% reduction in PANSS Positive scores in the overall sample exceeds the conventional 20% benchmark for significant clinical improvement, while the 23.2% reduction in PANSS Negative scores also meets the threshold for meaningful change. The modest 7% decrease in antipsychotic dose suggests improvement was not driven by higher dosing. Quality of life improved by nearly 20%, aligning with functional recovery.