Grant: Project Grant

Schizophrenia is a serious and disabling illness that affects about 1 in 100 people. The cause is unknown for this brain disease that often affects youths, seemingly at random in a family. For babies born with a genetic deletion (missing piece of DNA) on one of the pair of chromosomes 22, the risk is very high: 1 in 4 will develop schizophrenia. By comparing people with the deletion who have and have not developed schizophrenia, we aim to identify additional genetic changes and non-genetic factors that will allow us to personalize risk estimates. Because the schizophrenia illness is the same, insights gained from studying this chromosome deletion can help us learn about schizophrenia more generally. An international collaboration has provided us with the opportunity to study the complete genetic codes of an unprecedented number of individuals with this high risk deletion. Our group has recently made this genetic information ready for analyzing the many types of DNA-level changes that could affect the risk of developing schizophrenia. We will obtain similar genetic data for 100 additional Canadians with this deletion where we know schizophrenia outcome. This will mean instead of just 435 people we will have 815 people with this deletion who also have outcome and detailed genetic information. For all 815, we will collect information on other possible risk factors for schizophrenia, such as premature birth. We will use this unique dataset to develop and test prediction algorithms for schizophrenia. Families, clinicians and researchers want to anticipate and ultimately prevent disabling outcomes like schizophrenia in at-risk individuals. Discovering the genetic and non-genetic factors that predict schizophrenia in people from a high risk group could help us predict risk for schizophrenia in the general population. This could help us intervene early to prevent major disabilities.