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The C/At is out of the bag: a gene for mental illness

The Pharmacogenomics Journal volume 1, pages 13–14 (2001)Cite this article

Has the first ‘schizophrenia’ gene been identified? The knowledge that genes play a considerable role in the etiology of schizophrenia is well recognized. However, failures of consistent replication of any of the several chromosomal regions implicated in schizophrenia have left investigators frustrated, especially in this last decade. It seems that now, signs for an era of new definitions of nosological entities in psychiatry are appearing on the horizon. With the recent work by Meyer et al from Lesch’s group that appeared in Molecular Psychiatry,1 the first C/At is out of the bag. What we call schizophrenia appears to actually be a syndromal definition encom- passing various heterogenous diseases. One of those diseases is a type of periodic catatonia, which is a subform of catatonic schizophrenia (MIM 181500, OMIM™, Online Mendelian inheritance in Man, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Omin). Periodical catatonia is a heterologous, Mendelian dominant disease with a major-gene effect and it has loci mapped at 22q13.33 and 15q15.2 In the recent report in Molecular Psychiatry, the results of a restricted genome-wide linkage scan study followed by positional gene approach on periodic catatonia have resulted in the finding of an association of a gene encoding a novel putative cation channel in the 22q13 locus and periodic catatonia.1

Schizophrenia is possibly the most severe, incapacitating and devastating psychiatric disorder, with a lifetime risk of 1% in the general population and a peak onset in early adulthood. The diagnosis of schizophrenia is currently made by criterion-based systems, including positive (eg, hallucinations and delusions) and negative (eg, avolition and alogia) symptoms. Psychotic symptoms, such as hallucinations and paranoid delusions, are notable for their aberrant representations of, and relation to the external world. A core clinical manifestation of schizophrenia is disruption of thought, which is a mental process that is poorly localized in the brain and influenced by multiple neural systems. Recent studies suggest that schizophrenia may involve cortical, limbic, and subcortical structures as well as multiple neurotransmitter systems. Lesch’s group has used Leonard’s classification of schizophrenia, which unlike the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association) classification of schizophrenia, catatonia type, makes a distinction between periodic and systematic catatonia based on different types of symptoms, longitudinal course and outcome.

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References

  1. Meyer J, Huberth A, Ortega G, Syagailo VS, Jatzke S, MöGerlach JH et al . A missense mutation in a novel gene encoding a putative cation channel is associated with catatonic schizophrenia in a large pedigree Mol Psychiatry 2001 6: 302–306

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  1. Laboratory of Pharmacogenomics, UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    M-L Wong

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Correspondence to M-L Wong.

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Wong, ML. The C/At is out of the bag: a gene for mental illness. Pharmacogenomics J 1, 13–14 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.tpj.6500003

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