Home Genetic Test for Schizophrenia

(August 7, 2006) -- Nearly 1 percent of all Americans, 2.4 million people, have schizophrenia. An estimated 5.7 million have bipolar disorder. And 2.2 million adults have obsessive-compulsive disorder.

What if you found out tomorrow that you could become one of them?

Within two years, a Kentucky medical genetics company plans to market a home test designed to help consumers determine whether they are genetically susceptible to schizophrenia. The test, performed at home and analyzed in a lab, is the culmination of 10 years of research - and for better or worse, an example of what the brave new genomic world has wrought.

The AssureGene test for schizophrenia was developed by SureGene, the Louisville, Ky., company that plans to market the assessment.

Genes, the minuscule biological "instruction manuals" that tell our bodies how to develop, have been tied to cocaine addiction, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anorexia nervosa and more.

Still, scientists greet some new genetic tests with reservations. And they worry that the emphasis on genetics gives consumers the frightening impression that they are doomed from the womb. Psychiatric illnesses are complex, they say - and have both a strong biological component and a strong environmental component.

"You can't separate the two," says Dr. J. Raymond DePaulo Jr., chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "It's not nature versus nurture - it's nature and nurture."

Consider the past. Karen Mann has. She knows that once lithium was the medication for bipolar disorder. And a dark and lingering stigma accompanied the words mental illness. There were no options and little hope.

So four years ago, when Mann learned she was bipolar - also called "manic-depression" for its sweeping mood swings - she remembered that her grandmother had the disorder, too.

"I knew there was a genetic link," she said.

But unlike her grandmother, Mann, 30, has had the benefit of several medications. She also is a psychiatric nurse and a board member for the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Maryland.

Unlike her grandmother, Mann lives in an era when researchers are untangling the roots of psychiatric disorders.

"The next big story is the brain," Hopkins' DePaulo says.

But the knowledge could complicate life for prospective parents. Once the connection between genetics and a serious illness is established, couples might wonder: Should we have children?

In a soon-to-be-published study, Jehannine C. Austin, a neurochemist and genetic researcher at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, surveyed family members of patients with psychiatric illness.

A quarter chose not to have children, she said, based on an overestimated risk that they would have an ill child.

According to the SureGene Web site, "Schizophrenia does not present until the second or third decade of life," and siblings of schizophrenics are, on average, 10 times more likely to develop the disease than the general population.

SureGene does not want to offer false hope or overhype its product, says Tim Ramsey, the firm's chief executive. But before it hits the market, the company is addressing potential critics.

"The company has a policy that the test will not be used for prenatal diagnosis," he says, "mainly because some folks find it objectionable."

Meanwhile, SureGene is conducting market research to see how to pitch the product.

"We're not promising a cure," Ramsey says. "What we hope to do is provide families with an accurate picture of their risk."

Source: Baltimore Sun

Last updated: 8/06

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