A multi-national group of investigators, including a scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has discovered that nearly a third of the genetic basis of schizophrenia may be attributed to the cumulative actions of thousands of common genetic variants. The effects of each of these genetic changes, innocuous on its own, add up to a significant risk for developing both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Two separate studies, one in the United States and another in the United Kingdom, have discovered that a gene, labeled DISC1, plays a key role in the development of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that usually develops in late teens or early adulthood, between the ages of 16 and 25.

A study on schizophrenia treatment has implicated machinery that maintains the flow of potassium in cells and revealed a potential molecular target for new treatments. Expression of a previously unknown form of a key such potassium channel was found to be 2.5 fold higher than normal in the brain memory hub of people with the chronic mental illness and linked to a hotspot of genetic variation.

Rutgers geneticist Linda Brzustowicz and her colleagues have identified a specific DNA change that is likely to increase risk for developing schizophrenia in some people. It provides a potential mechanism that may be a point of entry for drug therapy, consistent with the growing trend of personalized medicine.

In one of the first instances of targeted drug design in psychiatric treatment, University of Pittsburgh researchers have found an experimental agent that shows promise in addressing working memory impairments that occur in schizophrenia.

Research from the University of Pittsburgh could expand the options for controlling schizophrenia by identifying a brain region that responds to more than one type of antipsychotic drug. The findings illustrate for the first time that the orbitofrontal cortex could be a promising target for developing future antipsychotic drugs—even those that have very different mechanisms of action.

Many of the structural and neurochemical features of schizophrenia are present long before the full syndrome of schizophrenia develops. What processes tip the balance between the ultra-high risk states and the development of schizophrenia?

New scientific insights into schizophrenia are pointing toward new drugs that offer hope for millions of individuals with the disease — the most serious form of mental illness, according to an article scheduled for the Sept. 15 issue of Chemical & Engineering News, ACS' weekly newsmagazine.

Researchers from UQ's Queensland Brain Institute are set to conduct a world-first trial into the link between prenatal vitamin D levels and schizophrenia prevalence.

Throughout the world, scientists are attempting to recognize and treat schizophrenic disorders at an earlier stage.

People with schizophrenia have an increased number of unusual chromosomal changes, particularly structural changes that have the potential to alter the function of the genes. These results were published today in the scientific journal Nature.

Researchers have discovered new genes linked to schizophrenia, it has been revealed.