Novel insight into the genetic basis of schizophrenia revealed

Written by Alice Weatherston

Genetic analysis of almost 65,000 individuals with and without schizophrenia has revealed that schizophrenia risk is increased as a result of the inheritance of gene variants linked to synaptic pruning. The study, which was published recently in Nature, represents the first described association between specific gene variants and the biological processes underlying the psychiatric disorder. Despite originally being described over 130 years ago, to date there is still a lack of effective treatments for patients suffering from schizophrenia. In 2014 an international consortium led by a team at the Broad Institute (MA, USA) successfully identified over 100 human genome regions...

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