Researchers have perhaps discovered some new clues that will bring a bit of clarity to a condition that does the exact opposite to those it affects, schizophrenia.
In what is being called the biggest study of its kind on the disease, scientists have discovered more than 100 genes that they claim play a role in the development of schizophrenia, a condition that now affects approximately one in every 100 people in their lifetime.
"We've been able to detect genetic risk factors on a huge and unprecedented scale and shed new light on the biological cause of the condition," explained Professor Michael O'Donovan at Cardiff University School of Medicine, one of several hundred scientists involved in the research.
The research for this project was a multinational, collaborative effort, as some 300 scientists in 35 countries worldwide were involved. The team helped identify over 100 locations in the human genome associated with the risk of developing schizophrenia, a psychiatric disease which affects more than 24 million people worldwide.
The group hopes that these findings will now point to pathways that will help underlie the condition, leading to new medical approaches in the treating the disorder. Schizophrenia is characterized by delusions, hallucinations, and disorderly thinking patterns. Researchers claims the condition usually emerges in patients in their teens and early 20s.
These scientists are hopeful the discoveries in their research will shed new light on the biological cause of the condition.
"Detecting biological risk factors on this scale shows that schizophrenia can be tackled by the same approaches that have already transformed outcomes for people with other diseases. We now believe they can also do so for schizophrenia which has, until now, been so poorly understood," said Professor Sir Mike Owen, director of Cardiff University's MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics. "The key challenge now is to translate these new insights into the biological basis of schizophrenia, into new diagnostic tools and novel treatments for patients and finally put an end to the 60-year-wait for new treatments for sufferers worldwide."
Along with opening up the door to new knowledge of the condition of schizophrenia, the researchers are also admitting these new discoveries in their studies have shown a spotlight on just how little is known about the disease.
The puzzle of schizophrenia, they claim, is that any one patient might have one of thousands of possible combination of genes which leads to greater susceptibility to the illness, plus a handful of environmental risk factors.
The study of biological insights into risk factors for schizophrenia was published in the journal Nature.
