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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.

Original publication

DOI

10.1038/nn.4228

Type

Journal article

Journal

Nat Neurosci

Publication Date

03/2016

Volume

19

Pages

420 - 431

Keywords

Brain, Endophenotypes, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Linkage Disequilibrium, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Neuroimaging, Organ Size, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Schizophrenia