FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 14, 1999
Contact: Gina M. DiGravio, (617) 638-8491
REPORT IMPLICATES LOCATION OF GENE FOR SCHIZOPHRENIA
Boston, MA -- In a report which appeared in the June issue of Clinical Genetics, Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researchers have described two unrelated women with paranoid schizophrenia who have an overlapping deletion in the Xp22.3 chromosome region.
"Schizophrenia effects about one in every 100 individuals, and thus far no single gene for it has been isolated," said lead investigator Jeff Milunsky, MD, director of clinical genetics at the Center for Human Genetics at BUSM and Boston Medical Center. "Our findings implicate this genetic region in having a gene involved in the pathogenesis of paranoid schizophrenia."
Although previous studies and case reports have documented structural chromosome rearrangements in patients with schizophrenia, none of these studies has consistently implicated a specific shared gene region. "Although this shared deletion almost certainly contains a gene involved in paranoid schizophrenia," said Milunsky. "This would be only one gene of many implicated in causing schizophrenia." Milunsky added that several studies are underway to isolate this potential susceptibility gene.
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