Is schizophrenia one disease… or eight?
Rather than being a single condition, new research published in the American Journal of Psychiatry suggests that schizophrenia may be a group of eight genetically different diseases - each with their own symptoms.
Schizophrenia affects about 1% of the world’s population. Previous research has suggested that 80% of the risk for having schizophrenia is hereditary. Historically though, scientists have struggled to pinpoint which genes increase risk for schizophrenia.
Despite this, in 2014, researchers from Cardiff University School of Medicine in the UK reported that they had linked 108 genes - 83 of them newly discovered - to schizophrenia.
However, co-author of that study, Prof. Michael O’Donovan, warned that:
“Genetics only provides pointers to aspects of biology, but other research is needed to follow up those pointers and translate that into a detailed understanding of disease mechanisms. So by providing lots of genetic clues, we have provided an unprecedented number of openings to study the biology of the disorder.”
In the new study, researchers from the universities of Granada in Spain and Washington in St Louis, MO, recruited 4,196 schizophrenia patients and 3,200 healthy controls to identify the different gene networks implicated in schizophrenia.
Read more: www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/288051.php
thebrainbank.scienceblog.com/2015/01/18/schizophrenia-setting-the-misconceptions-straight/
www.scienceclarified.com/Ro-Sp/Schizophrenia.html