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Schizophrenia: a common disease caused by multiple rare alleles

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TLDR
It is suggested that schizophrenia is highly heterogeneous genetically and that many predisposing mutations are highly penetrant and individually rare, even specific to single cases or families.
Abstract
Schizophrenia is widely held to stem from the combined effects of multiple common polymorphisms, each with a small impact on disease risk. We suggest an alternative view: that schizophrenia is highly heterogeneous genetically and that many predisposing mutations are highly penetrant and individually rare, even specific to single cases or families. This "common disease--rare alleles" hypothesis is supported by recent findings in human genomics and by allelic and locus heterogeneity for other complex traits. We review the implications of this model for gene discovery research in schizophrenia.

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Journal ArticleDOI

Common polygenic variation contributes to risk of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder

Shaun Purcell, +81 more
- 06 Aug 2009 - 
TL;DR: The extent to which common genetic variation underlies the risk of schizophrenia is shown, using two analytic approaches, and the major histocompatibility complex is implicate, which is shown to involve thousands of common alleles of very small effect.
Journal ArticleDOI

Five years of GWAS discovery

TL;DR: The past five years have seen many scientific and biological discoveries made through the experimental design of genome-wide association studies (GWASs), which were aimed at detecting variants at genomic loci that are associated with complex traits in the population and, in particular, at detecting associations between common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and common diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, auto-immune diseases, and psychiatric disorders.
Journal ArticleDOI

Rare and common variants: twenty arguments

TL;DR: 20 arguments for and against each of these models of the genetic basis of complex traits are reviewed and it is concluded that both classes of effect can be readily reconciled.
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Journal ArticleDOI

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Common polygenic variation contributes to risk of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder

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Trending Questions (1)
What are some examples of rare alleles?

Some examples of rare alleles include mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes that are associated with inherited breast and ovarian cancer.