Increased Burden of Rare Genetic Variations Found in Schizophrenia

nih.gov — People with schizophrenia (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/schizophrenia/index.shtml) bear an “increased burden” of rare deletions and duplications of genetic material, genome-wide, say researchers supported in part by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). “Although many of us have these changes in our genetic material, they are about 15 percent more frequent in people with schizophrenia,” explained Pamela Sklar, M.D., Ph.D., of Harvard University and the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research. “We also discovered two large areas of chromosomal deletions that confer a great deal of risk for schizophrenia and confirm involvement of a third previously reported area.” Sklar and colleagues in the International Schizophrenia Consortium team, representing 11 research institutes worldwide, report on the largest study of its kind to date, online July 30, 2008, in the journal Nature.

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