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Psychoneuroimmunology aims to investigate reciprocal interactions of the immune system and central nervous system and then to translate these effects to a deeper understanding of their influence on behavior and mental illness.Schizophrenia has been for decades the subject of immunological research demonstrating specific and non-specific dysfunctions of immune subsystems.Many observations of immune dysregulation in schizophrenia overlap with central etiopathophysiological mechanisms as well as with clinical manifestations of the illness.Moreover immunotherapy offers the opportunity to modify or re-balance the immune system and may become useful in management of the illness.So far the research has shown the association of schizophrenia with higher prevalence of autoimmune disorders in patients and their relatives, association with particular MHC haplotypes, cytokine dysregulation, presence of acute phase proteins, morphological changes in immunocompetent cells, elevated titers of wide range of specific and nonspecific antibodies, as well as activation of microglia in central nervous system.In my research I have investigated CTLA-4 and CD28 gene polymorphisms with respect to symptomatololgy of schizophrenia.CTLA-4 and CD28 are two related receptors expressed on cell surfaces, which despite the fact that they bind the same ligands, they mediate differentially regulation of T-cell activity.CD28 is a major co-stimulator whereas CTLA-4 performs negative regulatory functions.The polymorphisms of these genes have been implied previously as conferring the susceptibility to many disorders having immune basis.In my research I have shown that although CTLA-4 and CD28 gene polymorphisms showed only trend-level associations with schizophrenia according to ICD-10 and DSM-Ⅳ criteria, there were significant differences in distribution of alleles and genotypes between controls and patients fulfilling criteria of St.Louis probable schizophrenia and Crows subtype 2 schizophrenia.Moreover, the analysis of symptomatology showed significant differences in polymorphic variants of CTLA-4 gene between patients with no co-occurrence between psychotic and affective symptoms and patients with psychotic symptoms dominating the clinical picture.