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Sex differences in the genetic risk for schizophrenia: History of the evidence for sex‐specific and sex‐dependent effects
Author(s) -
Goldstein Jill M.,
Cherkerzian Sara,
Tsuang Ming T.,
Petryshen Tracey L.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
american journal of medical genetics part b: neuropsychiatric genetics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.393
H-Index - 126
eISSN - 1552-485X
pISSN - 1552-4841
DOI - 10.1002/ajmg.b.32159
Subject(s) - schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , family history , population , etiology , mechanism (biology) , genetic association , psychology , twin study , developmental psychology , clinical psychology , biology , medicine , psychiatry , genetics , heritability , gene , genotype , single nucleotide polymorphism , environmental health , philosophy , epistemology , radiology
Although there is a long history to examinations of sex differences in the familial (and specifically, genetic) transmission of schizophrenia, there have been few investigators who have systematically and rigorously studied this issue. This is true even in light of population and clinical studies identifying significant sex differences in incidence, expression, neuroanatomic and functional brain abnormalities, and course of schizophrenia. This review highlights the history of work in this arena from studies of family transmission patterns, linkage and twin studies to the current molecular genetic strategies of large genome‐wide association studies. Taken as a whole, the evidence supports the presence of genetic risks of which some are sex‐specific (i.e., presence in one sex and not the other) or sex‐dependent (i.e., quantitative differences in risk between the sexes). Thus, a concerted effort to systematically investigate these questions is warranted and, as we argue here, necessary in order to fully understand the etiology of schizophrenia. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.