Scientists from University College London (United Kingdom) have discovered a very rare genetic variant that increases (doubling or even tripling) the risk of developing both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder as well as alcoholism. The study has been published in the journal Psychiatric Genetics .
The researchers examined the genetic analysis of 4,971 people diagnosed with one of these three disorders and compared them with 1,309 healthy people, discovering that people with the GRM3 gene , relevant in brain signaling, had a higher risk of developing schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or alcoholism . The conclusion of the data led to establish that this genetic variant is found in 1 in 200 people .
“We could have the next big drug target for the treatment of mental illness. The work opens new ways to prevent and treat mental illnesses by revealing the mechanisms involved in their development. The result on GRM3 is particularly compelling, as the chances of this happening by chance are only one in a billion, "says David Curtis, leader of the study.
The association between the GRM3 variant and an increased risk of suffering from schizophrenia has been confirmed by another global study within a consortium of more than 200 institutions, and published in the journal Nature , which examined the genomes of 36,989 people who had developed schizophrenia and 113,075 healthy individuals from different parts of the world.
