March 19, 2007

discovery of possible genetic link to schizophrenia

A professor of psychiatric genetics commented on the finding by US researchers that certain genes involved in inflammation and autoimmune disorders might be key in understanding the genetic basis to schizophrenia.

Peter McGuffin, Professor of Psychiatric Genetics and Dean of the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London, said:

“My main concern about this report is the initial search was based on only 178 cases. When you’re looking at half a million markers to search the whole genome for genes involved in a complex disease most experts would say that you need 5 to 10 times the number of cases they had here. I’d worry that this will turn out to be a false positive.”