Schizophrenia Bulletin Advance Access originally published online on July 21, 2008
Schizophrenia Bulletin 2008 34(5):806-812; doi:10.1093/schbul/sbn079
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Genetic Research in Schizophrenia: New Tools and Future Perspectives
2 Genetics and Aging Research Unit, MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA
1 To whom correspondence should be addressed; Genetics and Aging Research Unit, MGH-East (MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease), Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, 114 16th Street, Charlestown, MA 02129; tel: +1-617-724-5567, fax: +1-617-724-1823, e-mail: bertram{at}helix.mgh.harvard.edu.
Genetically, schizophrenia is a complex disease whose pathogenesis is likely governed by a number of different risk factors. While substantial efforts have been made to identify the underlying susceptibility alleles over the past 2 decades, they have been of only limited success. Each year, the field is enriched with nearly 150 additional genetic association studies, each of which either proposes or refutes the existence of certain schizophrenia genes. To facilitate the evaluation and interpretation of these findings, we have recently created a database for genetic association studies in schizophrenia ("SzGene"; available at http://www.szgene.org). In addition to systematically screening the scientific literature for eligible studies, SzGene also reports the results of allele-based meta-analyses for polymorphisms with sufficient genotype data. Currently, these meta-analyses highlight not only over 20 different potential schizophrenia genes, many of which represent the "usual suspects" (eg, various dopamine receptors and neuregulin 1), but also several that were never meta-analyzed previously. All the highlighted loci contain at least one variant showing modest (summary odds ratios approximately 1.20 [range 1.06–1.45]) but nominally significant risk effects. This review discusses some of the strengths and limitations of the SzGene database, which could become a useful bioinformatics tool within the schizophrenia research community.
Keywords: epidemiologic methods / genetic associations / meta-analysis / schizophrenia
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  M. van den Buuse Modeling the Positive Symptoms of Schizophrenia in Genetically Modified Mice: Pharmacology and Methodology Aspects Schizophr Bull, November 9, 2009; (2009) sbp132v1. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|