SCIENCE OF THE BRAIN - Genetic Links to Schizophrenia

"Pinpointing genetic links to schizophrenia may open doors to better treatment" PBS NewsHour 7/24/2014

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Finally tonight, understanding the connections between human genetics and schizophrenia.

It’s part of our series on the science of the brain.  Tonight, we look at a study published this week, the largest ever of schizophrenia patients.  There are more than three million of them in the U.S.  The study found that perhaps more than 100 genes were associated with the condition.  Genetics has long been assumed to play a role.

But for the first time, researchers found genes in the immune system are among those involved.  Patients have long awaited better treatments.

Dr. Steven Hyman is the director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.  His center was involved in this study.  And I spoke with him yesterday.

Dr. Steven Hyman, welcome to the NewsHour.

First of all, tell us what it is like to have schizophrenia.  We know that something like three million Americans suffer from this.

DR. STEVEN HYMAN, Broad Institute:  That’s right.  It affects about 1 percent of people worldwide, including the United States.

And what patients experience is extremely distressing and also disabling.  There are three kinds of symptoms.  Most famously, people have what are called psychotic symptoms, hallucinations, most often hearing voices that aren’t there, delusions, which are fixed false beliefs that are not culturally appropriate.

But also less well recognized are two other symptoms which contribute to disability.  People have declines in their cognitive functions, things like memory, ability to pay attention, and ability to use their thoughts to control their emotions and behavior.

And then there’s another cluster of symptoms called deficit symptoms, where people have what is called blunted affect.  That is even something very sad might not elicit a response or something very happy.  They lose motivation.

The drugs we have today only treat the psychotic symptoms, and do that incompletely, and really don’t touch the other two sets of symptoms, leaving patients very disabled and great costs and challenges of course to families and society.