An 18-year joint Australian-Indian study made possible by the recruitment, diagnosis and DNA screening of thousands of people in India has identified a new clue in the quest for causes of schizophrenia and potential treatments.
A collaboration between The University of Queensland and a team of Indian researchers led by Professor Rangaswamy Thara, co- founder and director of the Schizophrenia Research Foundation in Chennai, searched the genomes of more than 3000 individuals and found those with schizophrenia were more likely to have a particular genetic variation.
Professor Bryan Mowry from UQ’s Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) said such studies had predominantly been done in populations with European ancestry, with more than 100 schizophrenia-associated variants identified previously.
“Looking at other populations can highlight different parts of the genome with a more robust association with the disease,” Professor Mowry said.
Read more at: The University of Queensland Australia
Studying the DNA of Indian populations has revealed a new gene for schizophrenia (Photo Credit: University of Queensland)