Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2010 Mar;33(1):35-66.
doi: 10.1016/j.psc.2009.12.003.

The role of genetics in the etiology of schizophrenia

Pablo V Gejman  1 , Alan R Sanders, Jubao Duan
Affiliations
Review

The role of genetics in the etiology of schizophrenia

Pablo V Gejman et al. Psychiatr Clin North Am. 2010 Mar.

Abstract

Schizophrenia is a complex genetic disorder manifesting combined environmental and genetic causation. Recently, genome-wide association experiments yielded remarkable new experimental evidence that is leading to a better understanding of the genetic models and the biological risk factors involved in schizophrenia. These studies have discovered uncommon copy number variations (mainly deletions) and common single nucleotide polymorphisms with alleles associated with schizophrenia. The aggregate data provide support for polygenic inheritance and for genetic overlap of schizophrenia with autism and with bipolar disorder. It is anticipated that the application of a myriad of tools from systems biology, in combination with biological functional experiments, will lead to a delineation of biological pathways involved in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, and eventually to new therapies.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Quantile-quantile plot of observed vs. expected p-values for tag SNPs for fourteen schizophrenia candidate genes. Open circles represent the relationship between the expected (X-axis) and observed (Y-axis) p-values for pointwise nominal Armitage trend tests for the 433 SNPs that represent tags (at r2>0.8) for common SNPs in each of 14 tested genes (RGS4, DISC1, DTNBP1, STX7, TAAR6, PPP3CC, NRG1, DRD2, HTR2A, DAOA, AKT1, CHRNA7, COMT, and ARVCF). The solid line represents the null expectation. The observed distribution is within the 95% confidence interval of the null expectation, consistent with a lack of evidence in the tested sample for association with schizophrenia in the tested candidate genes. The lowest p-values are slightly below the line (less significant than expected), but still within the confidence interval. Reprinted with permission .
Figure 2
Figure 2
The combined p-values of three datasets (MGS, ISC, and SGENE) at the MHC region (~26~33Mb). The positions of the three histone gene clusters and NOTCH4 are indicated in the RefSeq track (top of the graph). The relative location of the maximum peak in each data set is indicated by a line below the p-value peaks. Cis-eQTL (with LOD >5) are shown below the graph with association −log p-values.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Gejman PV, Owen MJ, Sanders AR. Psychiatric Genetics. In: Tasman A, Kay J, Lieberman J, editors. Psychiatry. Hoboken: Wiley; 2003.
    1. McGrath J, Saha S, Chant D, et al. Schizophrenia: a concise overview of incidence, prevalence, and mortality. Epidemiol Rev. 2008;30:67. - PubMed
    1. Messias EL, Chen CY, Eaton WW. Epidemiology of schizophrenia: review of findings and myths. Psychiatr Clin North Am. 2007;30:323. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Girard C, Simard M. Clinical characterization of late- and very late-onset first psychotic episode in psychiatric inpatients. Am J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2008;16:478. - PubMed
    1. Remschmidt H, Theisen FM. Schizophrenia and related disorders in children and adolescents. J Neural Transm Suppl. 2005;121 - PubMed

Publication types