Many mental disorders such as schizophrenia are difficult to diagnose however a new study has surfaced about a potential way of diagnosing schizophrenia by testing microRNA molecules in neurons removed from the nose by a simple biopsy.

According to Medical News Today, a new study led by researchers from Tel Aviv University (TAU) in Israel found that collecting neurons from the nose could be a fast way to test for schizophrenia.

Currently schizophrenia can only be confirmed physiologically through sampling the brain during an autopsy. For now doctors can only diagnosis the mental illness following a series of psychological tests, and interviews not only with the patient but with their families and their friends.

Noam Shomron of TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine conducted the study with her colleagues and released a statement in which she found that their research "could lead to a "more sure-fire" of diagnosing schizophrenia than ever before. It could also lead to earlier detection of the disease, which could vastly improve treatment."

However, Shomron and colleagues had a hunch that perhaps olfactory neurons located in the upper part of the inner nose might also offer some biomarkers.

For their study, the researchers collected olfactory neurons from patients diagnosed with schizophrenia and gathered a control group of individuals without the disease.

After running them through high-throughput sequencers that can scan the microRNA molecules in the cells the results concluded that nose neurons from schizophrenia patients have higher levels of a particular microRNA, called miR-382, than those taken not affected by the mental illness.

Shomron explained, "we were able to narrow down the microRNA to a differentially expressed set, and from there down to a specific microRNA which is elevated in individuals with the disease compared to healthy individuals."

The study is set to be published in the July 2013 issue of Neurobiology of Disease.