Detecting genetic component of schizophrenia

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25293253
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Partial Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Psychiatric science
• Research Institution: Fujita Health University
• Principal Investigator: Iwata Nakao 藤田保健衛生大学, 医学部, 教授 (60312112)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 遺伝学

Outline of Final Research Achievements

A number of genome-wide association studies (GWASs) for schizophrenia have conducted, and now detected multiple susceptibility genes. However, as such locus cannot fully explain the heritability (i.e. missing heritability), rare variants may be the key factor to detect the whole range of the schizophrenia risk. In this study, we conducted a GWAS (for the common variants: SNP) and a target resequencing (for previously implicated loci) in the Japanese population, to detect the susceptibility genes for schizophrenia.
Approximately 5,000 subjects were genotyped, however, we could not find any significant association in SNP nor SNVs with schizophrenia.
Specifically, to examine the existence of the genetic risk within our samples, we conducted a polygenic component analysis: we did find significant enrichment of the risk alleles in our cases, implying accumulative genetic risk exists. Further sample size will be required to identify individual susceptibility SNP for schizophrenia.

Free Research Field

精神科遺伝学