Fish oil pills may be able to save some young people with signs of mental illness from descending into schizophrenia, according to a preliminary but first-of-its-kind study.

The Austrian study of just 81 patients comes from leaders in the field of youth mental health and adds to evidence suggesting severe mental illness might be prevented with the right intervention.

Though it sounds incredibly simple, fish oil fits one hypothesis for what causes schizophrenia, a possible difference in how the body handles fatty acids.

“If it works, it will be an absolutely tremendous development,” said Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, chairman of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, who wasn’t involved in the new study.

More research is needed to see if the results are accurate, he said.

The researchers are beginning a larger international study in eight cities with hopes of replicating their findings, which appear in February’s Archives of General Psychiatry, released Monday.

Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness that strikes adolescents and young adults. About 2.4 million Americans have the disorder, which is treated with antipsychotic medication.

Since the 1990s, researchers have wondered if the disease could be stopped in its earliest stages, before it fully overpowers a person’s grip on reality. Studies have tried antipsychotics in select young people, but troubling side effects pose ethical questions and results have been mixed.

Scientists in the field greeted the findings with cautious excitement.

Dr. Janet Wozniak of Harvard Medical School said the findings, while preliminary, might reasonably cause psychiatrists to recommend fish oil to some patients because there are known benefits and little risk.

Wozniak advised consumers to look for high quality nutritional supplements. Most fish oil capsules are free from contaminants and test highly for quality, said William Obermeyer of ConsumerLab.com, which tests supplements for manufacturers and publishes ratings for subscribers.

The research was funded by the Stanley Medical Research Institute, a nonprofit in Chevy Chase, Md., that supports research on schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The Oklahoman

A new study shows that a 21-gene test of a patient’s breast cancer tumour may change doctor and patient treatment decisions, including the need for chemotherapy.

The test, Oncotype DX, is made by Genomic Health Inc. It examines 21 genes from a tumour sample to determine how active they are.

A test score between 0 and 100 predicts how likely the cancer is to recur. For women with low scores, chemotherapy is not recommended.

More than 120,000 breast cancer patients have undergone the test since it became commercially available in 2004.

The test is intended for patients who have a type of breast cancer, called estrogen receptor-positive, which has not spread to the lymph nodes. About 100,000 such cases are diagnosed each year.

“The trend in oncology is towards personalized medicine. We likely will see more tests similar to this one in the future,” said Loyola University Health System Medical oncologist and study’s lead author Dr. Shelly Lo.

The findings are based on study, which included 89 breast cancer patients who received the gene test.

They were treated by 17 medical oncologists at Loyola, University of Michigan, University of California at Davis and Edward Hospital in Naperville, Il.

Doctors changed treatment decisions for 28 patients. In 20 of these cases, they changed their decision from hormone therapy plus chemotherapy to hormone therapy alone. 24 patients changed their treatment decisions, including nine who dropped chemotherapy.

“This is the first study to show that results from this test simultaneously impact decisions by physicians as well as patients,” Lo said.

The study has been published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Newstrack India