Genetic influences on schizophrenia and subcortical brain volumes: Large-scale proof of concept

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Psychosis Endophenotypes International Consortium - , Psychosis Endophenotypes International Consortium (Author)
  • for the ENIGMA Consortium - (Author)

Abstract

Schizophrenia is a devastating psychiatric illness with high heritability. Brain structure and function differ, on average, between people with schizophrenia and healthy individuals. As common genetic associations are emerging for both schizophrenia and brain imaging phenotypes, we can now use genome-wide data to investigate genetic overlap. Here we integrated results from common variant studies of schizophrenia (33,636 cases, 43,008 controls) and volumes of several (mainly subcortical) brain structures (11,840 subjects). We did not find evidence of genetic overlap between schizophrenia risk and subcortical volume measures either at the level of common variant genetic architecture or for single genetic markers. These results provide a proof of concept (albeit based on a limited set of structural brain measures) and define a roadmap for future studies investigating the genetic covariance between structural or functional brain phenotypes and risk for psychiatric disorders.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)420-431
Number of pages12
JournalNature Neuroscience
Volume19
Issue number3
Publication statusPublished - 23 Feb 2016
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

researchoutputwizard legacy.publication#72953
Scopus 84959158225
PubMed 26854805
ORCID /0000-0003-2132-4445/work/159171194

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas