High False-Positive Rate of a Putative Biomarker Test to Aid in the Diagnosis of Schizophrenia

Abstract

The current study confirms that the 51-plex test performs as expected in individuals with chronic schizophrenia (sensitivity = 89%), indicating that the abnormalities in this multiple biomarker test persist and are not affected by the number of years this illness has been present or by its treatment. However, there was a high false-positive rate in healthy control subjects in our sample, leading to a low specificity rate of 34%. Due to the high false-positive rate in our normal controls, this biomarker test was not able to discriminate between healthy control subjects and subjects with chronic schizophrenia in our sample.