Evanston, IL – September 21, 2011 – Pablo V. Gejman, M.D., Director of the NorthShore University HealthSystem (NorthShore) Center for Psychiatric Genetics led an international consortium conducting a genome-wide association study (GWAS) on schizophrenia. The researchers found five novel genetic variants that increase the susceptibility to schizophrenia. The findings are reported in the September 18, 2011 advance online edition of the journal Nature Genetics.

Schizophrenia is an elusive and severe psychiatric disorder that affects up to 70 million people worldwide. The causes of schizophrenia remain largely unknown and there is no cure, though for some individuals current treatments work well. There are multiple factors that increase the risk for schizophrenia, of which genetic factors are the strongest in the aggregate, though not precisely identified yet.

“This research highlights the need for a better understanding of the pathways leading to schizophrenia to enable development of better treatments,” said Dr. Gejman.

“Schizophrenia is largely a genetic disorder, though a complex one, and people who have close family members with schizophrenia are somewhat more likely to get this chronic, debilitating brain disorder,” said Alan R. Sanders, M.D., a collaborator also at NorthShore. “It usually begins in adolescence or early adulthood, and is characterized by hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking and behavior, and loss of interest and initiative. Chronic impairment in social functioning remains the more prevalent disease course, even with treatment.”

The publication is entitled “Genome-wide association study identifies five new schizophrenia loci” and is published under the byline of The Schizophrenia Psychiatric Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS) Consortium, or PGC-SZ. Formed in 2007, the PGC is the largest consortium ever in psychiatry. Over 250 researchers from more than 20 countries collaborated in an unparalleled spirit of cooperation to advance knowledge of the genetic causes of mental illness. Crucial to the project’s success was the willingness of many groups to share genetic data from tens of thousands of patients collected over many years. Numerous European, American, and Australian entities funded the research, and the US National Institute of Mental Health provided funds for coordination of the consortium.

The PGC-SZ collaboration was comprised of 17 research groups from the US, Europe and Australia, examining the role of common genetic variation in schizophrenia in an experiment of exceptional size: the discovery sample included almost 22,000 individuals of European ancestry, and the replication sample had 30,000 additional subjects. Seven loci that...