Home ❯ Schizophrenia Library ❯ Risk factors and antecedents ❯ Genetic risk factors

Genetic risk factors

Hundreds of genes have been linked to schizophrenia, but they do not follow typical patterns of inheritance where disorders can be predicted with confidence. This is because no particular set of genes has yet been identified as causing the disorder. Click on the tabs below to access the information, or browse the drop-down menu on the left.

Image: ©adimas – stock.adobe.com

Genetic and non-genetic risk

What is genetic and non-genetic risk?  Many disorders are the result of interaction between susceptibility genes and environmental influences. One example is cardiovascular disease; people with a family history of cardiovascular disease are more susceptible to heart problems, and environmental influences, such as diet, can increase this risk. Schizophrenia is also a complex disorder that can arise from both genetic and environmental influences, although heritability estimates are around 80%. What is the evidence for genetic and non-genetic risk? Moderate to high quality evidence found large increased risk of schizophrenia in people with one or two first-degree relatives with schizophrenia compared…

Genetics overview

When a gene is associated with an illness, ‘typical’ inheritance patterns mean that a person carrying that gene will be affected by the illness, and the gene may be passed down to any offspring. However, schizophrenia is appearing to be much more complex. Hundreds of genes have been linked to schizophrenia and these genes do not appear to follow typical patterns of inheritance across generations. Moreover, the additional influence of environmental factors significantly complicates the identification of susceptibility genes. This suggests that a susceptibility to schizophrenia may involve associations with multiple genes which interact with each other, and with the…

NeuRA Libraries

Title Colour Legend:
Green - Topic summary is available.
Orange - Topic summary is being compiled.
Red - Topic summary has no current systematic review available.