Schizophrenia is a serious psychiatric pathology, one of whose main risk factors is genetic predisposition, that is, that one of the parents or close relatives suffers from it, since it is estimated that the chances of inheriting it are around 70%, so scientists continue to search for genes involved in its development.
Now, the largest genetic study carried out on this psychiatric disease, carried out with the participation of scientists from 45 countries, led by the University of Cardiff and the University of Charité, and in which scientists from the University of Granada (UGR ) has discovered that the origin of schizophrenia lies in alterations in the development of the nervous system and has identified a large number of specific genes that could play important roles in the psychiatric disorder. In this work, genetic variants that this pathology shares with autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders are also described.
The research has been carried out by an international team of researchers who analyzed the complete genome analysis (GWAS) of more than 76,000 patients with schizophrenia and almost 250,000 healthy individuals who acted as a control group, and their findings will facilitate the development of new modulatory drugs. of the neurotransmitter called glutamate that could become an effective treatment to combat this mental disorder.
Specifically, the work found a much larger number of genetic links to schizophrenia than previously known, in 287 different regions of the genome, the DNA model of the human body. Within these regions, they then used advanced methods to identify 120 genes that are likely to contribute to the disorder. What’s more, Although there are a large number of genetic variants involved in schizophrenia, They showed that the genetic risk of schizophrenia it is concentrated in genes expressed in neurons, but not in any other tissue or cell type, suggesting that the biological role of these brain cells is crucial in schizophrenia.
The findings also suggest that abnormal neural function in schizophrenia affects many areas of the brain, which could explain its various symptoms, which can include hallucinations, delusions and trouble thinking clearly.
New therapeutic targets to treat schizophrenia
Until now it was unknown that alterations in the development of the nervous system were the origin of the disease, as this work has revealed, developed in the context of the International Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, which brings together the main research groups in this area worldwide, in which several Spanish institutions participate, and which has been published in the prestigious journal Nature.
The study “dismantles the strictly psychological theories about schizophrenia and clearly demonstrates its genetic origin and the involvement of altered neural systems”
Jorge Cervilla, Professor of Psychiatry at the UGR, explained that the genes associated with schizophrenia in this study encode proteins that are involved in neuronal functions such as cell differentiation and transmission between neurons.
“We have also found rare variants of the SP4 transcription factor and the GRIN2A glutamate receptor associated with schizophrenia. Some of these findings are similar to those found in autism and other developmental disorders, pointing to abnormal neurodevelopment in the brains of people with schizophrenia. It is a definitive finding of the important implication of glutamate in this disease, with solid evidence that teaches us new therapeutic targets to treat it”, says Cervilla, who points out that the study “dismantles the strictly psychological theories about schizophrenia and clearly demonstrates its genetic origin and the involvement of altered neural systems.”
Researchers from the Federico Olóriz Institute of Neurosciences of the UGR and the Biosanitary Institute of Granada (ibs Granada) Jorge Cervilla, Blanca Gutiérrez (Department of Psychiatry of the UGR), Margarita Rivera (Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology II) and Esther Molina ( Department of Nursing) have participated in this important scientific discovery.
Source: University of Granada (UGR), Cardiff University and Charité University
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