Study Identifies 22 Places in Human Genome That are Involved in Schizophrenia

A latest study discovers 22 spots in the human genome, out of which 13 are new findings, that play a role in schizophrenia.

The new genome wide association study (GWAS), that provided an estimation on the number of places in the human genome that are involved in schizophrenia, was led by Patrick F. Sullivan, MD,  professor in the departments of Genetics and Psychiatry and director of the Center for Psychiatric Genomics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

Schizophrenia is a severe, chronic brain disorder that occurs between the ages 16-30. After the age of  45 people do not suffer with this disorder. Reports according to PsyhCentral state that nearly 2.2 million U.S. adults, or about 1.1 percent of the population aged 18 and older in a given year, have schizophrenia.

"This study gives us the clearest picture to date of two different pathways that might be going wrong in people with schizophrenia," Sullivan said in a press release. "Now we need to concentrate our research very urgently on these two pathways in our quest to understand what causes this disabling mental illness."

The researchers provided a conclusion after examining a Swedish national sample of 5,001 schizophrenia victims. They had a control group of 6,243 victims. This was followed by a meta analysis of the a GWAS study conducted earlier. The researchers finally replicated the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 168 genomic regions in independent samples.

The study that involved more than 59,000 subjects identified two pathways, one of which is the calcium channel pathway. This pathway comprises of genes like CACNA1C and CACNB2. The proteins of these two genes meet each other as a part of a process of nerve cells. The second pathway is the micro-RNA 137 that includes the gene like MIR137,a regulator of neuronal development.

Sullivan concluded saying, "What's really exciting about this is that now we can use standard, off-the-shelf genomic technologies to help us fill in the missing pieces. We now have a clear and obvious path to getting a fairly complete understanding of the genetic part of schizophrenia. That wouldn't have been possible five years ago."

The study was published in the journal Nature Genetics.