Schizophrenia Gene Suspected

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Schizophrenia Gene Suspected

Wired News Report

12:30 p.m. Apr. 28, 2000 PDT

Scientists have moved one step closer to homing in on a gene responsible for schizophrenia. A researcher at the University of Toronto said Thursday she had localized the "neighborhood" that one of the genes lives in.

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Anne Bassett, associate professor of psychiatry at the university, led the 12-year study of 300 Canadians in 22 families with a high incidence of schizophrenia. "If we compare the human genome to a map of the world and gene localizing to finding the neighborhood the gene lives in, previous studies have been able to say that there may be a gene in North America, maybe even in Canada," she said. "Our study tells us that there is a gene predisposing to schizophrenia in the neighborhood of downtown Toronto and that we should be able to pinpoint the exact location in the next step of the research." Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder characterized by hallucinations, delusions, and an altered emotional and behavioral state. It generally manifests during late adolescence or early adulthood. Experts say the disease afflicts about 1 percent of the population in the U.S. and Canada, and is the second-most common mental illness next to depression.

Researcher Brzustowicz of Rutgers University pinpointed the gene to a small region of chromosome 1.

"This finding is very strong," Brzustowicz said. "This is approximately 100 times stronger evidence for the existence of a schizophrenia gene than reported in previous studies." Although previous research has indicated that schizophrenics have a genetic predisposition to the disease, this is the first study to pinpoint an actual gene neighborhood. The researchers say the next step will be to locate the gene itself.

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