Schizophrenia is typically a severe
psychiatric disorder that can have a dramatic impact on the wellbeing of
affected individuals and their families. The most common symptoms experienced
in people with schizophrenia include hallucinations, delusions, confused
thinking, a lack of motivation and impaired cognition. Although the exact
biological and environmental causes of schizophrenia are not fully understood,
genetics is known to have an important role in its development. However, not everyone with schizophrenia will share the same genetic
risk factors, and you can be at elevated genetic risk without developing
the disorder; this complexity has made it challenging
to identify which genes are involved in schizophrenia.
This project aims to overcome this challenge by
investigating how different genetic factors interact with each other in
individuals who have been diagnosed with psychosis and schizophrenia. This will enable new approaches to be developed for
identifying genes that increase the chance of developing schizophrenia,
as well genes that may help explain why some people in high risk groups do not
develop schizophrenia. The research also aims to identify genetic factors that
contribute to why some people have symptoms that do not improve with current
treatments.
The identification of risk genes for schizophrenia will
advance our understanding of the underlying biology that, when combined with
psychological and social risk factors, can give rise to the condition.
Our hope is that this can lead to the development of better treatments
that will have fewer adverse side effects and will help alleviate the
distressing symptoms experienced by many people with schizophrenia.
Aims: The project aims to deliver fundamental insights into the pathophysiology of schizophrenia by discovering novel genes associated with the disorder. The co-action between common and rare variants will be evaluated to test the following hypotheses:
1) Rare schizophrenia risk variants are enriched among cases with low genetic risk for schizophrenia from common variants
2) Rare variants that protect against schizophrenia are enriched among unaffected individuals at high genetic risk for schizophrenia.
