Epigenetics of Schizophrenia

According to the epidemiological survey, schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder that affects 1% of the population. There are no precise biomarkers that can be manipulated by clinicians to identify the disease. The ailment has a genetic risk of about 80%. Despite the high risks, studies on genes and polymorphisms associated with the disease account for little of these risks (Farrell et al., 2015). Environmental factors such as urbanity, child abuse, migrant status, use of hard drugs, maternal deficiency of vitamin D and prenatal infections also may contribute to schizophrenia. However, not all individuals exposed to these environmental factors develop the condition. Going by these observations, the interplay between the susceptibility genes and environmental factors is justifiable for the disease occurrence. Most studies of DNA methylation in association with schizophrenia are done on peripheral tissues as opposed to the brain because the peripheral tissues are readily available, and most biomarkers are common to both tissues (Wockner et al., 2014)