The long-term goal of the project is the identification of genes that contribute to overall genetic risk in bipolar disorder and the characterization of the biological function of these genes. It is anticipated that improvements in treatment, diagnosis and possibly, prevention will evolve once genetic contributions to affective disorders and schizophrenia are established. The completion of the first genome scan on multiplex families with bipolar affective disorder provided evidence for susceptibility regions on 13q32, 1q32 and 18p11.2 and these findings were published recently. Interestingly, these regions overlap with proposed chromosomal areas containing predisposing loci for schizophrenia. These findings raise the possibility that schizophrenia and affective disorders share some susceptibility loci. Because the linkage regions are broad, the challenge to pinpoint susceptibility genes from among many positional candidate genes (genes localized in susceptibility regions) is formidable. At present, the NIMH-IRP site is functioning primarily to collect additional affected bipolar sib pairs to enlarge the overall sample available to the NIMH grant-funded Bipolar Genetics consortium. In the past year, The NIMH-IRP site enrolled 64 BP families and completed interviews and submitted blood samples on 22 affected sibling pairs. Other families are in varying stages of completing the protocol requirements. No additional genetic analyses have been performed by the consortium as of this time.
| Dick, Danielle M; Foroud, Tatiana; Flury, Leah et al. (2003) Genomewide linkage analyses of bipolar disorder: a new sample of 250 pedigrees from the National Institute of Mental Health Genetics Initiative. Am J Hum Genet 73:107-14 |
