Major study on schizophrenia, bipolar
Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder run in families. Up to 80 percent of cases can be traced to inheritance, but determining exactly which genetic variants among millions of possibilities that might be responsible has proved challenging. Two studies combining thousands of patient samples — more than 10,000 people with schizophrenia and more than 7,000 people with bipolar disorder, plus larger numbers of unaffected people — have allowed differences in DNA associated with the diseases to rise above a vast sea of statistical noise. Looking at large samples, an international consortium — that included involvement by scientists at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) — has identified 10 genetic risk factors that contribute to either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and discovered strong evidence for three genes being implicated in both diseases. The results appeared in two papers published online in Nature Genetics. “There are hundreds of genes involved...