Dr. Patrick Sullivan final plenary session speaker World Congress for Psychiatric Genetics

Psychiatric News, October 9, 2013, reports on multi-national study stating new data adds to evidence for genetic causes of schizophrenia.

The Anorexia Nervosa Genetics Initiative (ANGI), the world’s largest genetic investigation into anorexia nervosa, starts today in Queensland. Thousands of anorexia nervosa sufferers from Australia, the US, Sweden and Denmark will be recruited to participate in this study. CPG co-Director Professor Cynthia Bulik is the lead investigator on the study.

The authors aimed to identify specific variants underlying genetic effects shared between the five disorders in the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium: autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, and schizophrenia.

By better understanding the molecular and biological mechanisms involved with schizophrenia, scientists hope to use this new genetic information to one day develop and design drugs that are more efficacious and have fewer side effects.

Overlap Blurs Diagnostic Categories – NIH-funded Study

In this 2012 Nature Reviews Genetics article, CPG Director Patrick Sullivan discusses the genetics of nine cardinal psychiatric disorders (namely, Alzheimer’s disease, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, alcohol dependence, anorexia nervosa, autism spectrum disorder, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, nicotine dependence and schizophrenia).

New research led by Patrick F. Sullivan, MD, FRANZCP, Director of the Center for Psychiatric Genomics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, points to an increased risk of autism spectrum disorders among individuals whose parents or siblings have been diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

In a recent publication in Neuron, CPG Director Patrick Sullivan describes the Psychiatric Genome-Wide Association Consortium (PGC).