Schizophrenia breakthrough: scientists shed light on biological cause

What causes schizophrenia? This is a question that has challenged scientists since the disorder was first identified almost 130 years ago. Now, for the first time, researchers have shed light on the biological origin of the illness.

Researchers have found that variants of the gene C4 - shown in green - play a key role in the development of schizophrenia.
Image credit: Heather de Rivera/McCarroll

In what has been hailed a "breakthrough" in schizophrenia research, scientists from Harvard Medical School, the Broad Institute and Boston Children's Hospital - all in Massachusetts - have discovered how a gene called complement component 4 (C4) plays a key role in schizophrenia development.

The research team - including senior author Steven McCarroll, associate professor of genetics and director of genetics for the Stanley Center at Harvard - says their findings may aid the development of much-needed new treatments and preventive strategies for schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by hallucinations, delusions, dysfunctional thought processes and agitated body movements.

It is estimated that around 21 million people across the globe have schizophrenia, with symptom onset most common in late adolescence or early adulthood.

The illness was first discovered by German psychiatrist Dr. Emile Kraepelin in 1887, though the term "schizophrenia" was not used until 1910, coined by Swiss psychiatrist Paul Eugen Bleuler. The name came from the Greek words "schizo" (split) and "phren" (mind), fueling the myth that people with schizophrenia have split personalities; this is not the case.

Understanding the genetic roots of schizophrenia

In the years since schizophrenia was discovered, researchers have been working hard to determine the underlying biological mechanisms that cause the illness.

Lack of understanding in this area has hampered the discovery of a cure or preventive strategies for schizophrenia; current treatments - such as antipsychotic medications - can only focus on eliminating symptoms.

Increasingly, researchers have looked at how schizophrenia may be caused by genetic factors, based on the knowledge that the disorder is heritable. In July 2014, the Schizophrenia Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium - including investigators from the Stanley Center -identified more than 100 areas of the human genome that are linked to the disorder.

Now, McCarroll and colleagues have built on these findings, identifying a specific gene that appears to have the strongest association with schizophrenia risk. This gene is C4, which is already known to play a key role in the immune system, alerting immune cells to pathogens that need to be destroyed.

Specific C4 structures linked to increased schizophrenia risk

For their study, recently published in the journal Nature, the team set out to gain a better understanding of how C4 works in the brain.

McCarroll and his colleague Aswin Sekar, an MD/PhD student at Harvard Medical School, created a novel molecular technique that enabled the team to characterize the structure of the C4 gene in the DNA samples of more than 65,000 individuals, of whom around 29,000 had schizophrenia and 36,000 did not.

Additionally, the researchers analyzed C4 activity in almost 700 post-mortem brain samples.

The researchers explain that C4 genes have significant variability in their structure, meaning the number of copies and variants of the gene can differ from person to person. This does not normally happen with most other genes, making C4 a gene of interest.