What psychiatrists diagnose as schizophrenia may actually be eight different gene disorders, reveals new research published in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Researchers at Washington University compared the DNA of 4,000 people diagnosed with schizophrenia and 3,800 healthy people.

Like Us on Facebook

They analyzed each participant's symptoms and matched these with any variation in their genes.

The result was the identification of several clusters of genes that appear to cause eight distinct forms of schizophrenia, each with its own set of symptoms.

Much isn't understood about schizophrenia, a chronic brain disorder that affects about one percent of Americans, said the American Psychiatric Association.

Schizophrenia's symptoms range from debilitating hallucinations ,or what most people call "hearing voices inside the head," attention problems, disordered speech and decision-making difficulties.

Schizophrenia is a complex disease that may be influenced by hundreds of thousands of genetic variants that may be interacting with one another, according to the researchers.

Dr. C. Robert Cloninger, lead author of the study, said genes rarely operate by themselves.

Dr. Cloninger likened schizophrenia to an orchestra. To understand how the disorder works, he said it's not enough to understand who the members of the orchestra are, but how each member interacts.

Previous studies led researchers to believe schizophrenia is a genetic disorder, although it's only now they're beginning to determine where it originated.

The Washington research identified at least eight different clusters of genes, not one as earlier studies suggest, that cause the disorder.

These groups of interacting genes work together to disrupt the brain's functions and produce varying severities of the mental disorder, according to the researchers.

Washington University's new study is an important milestone for scientists hoping to treat the disorder.

Their findings hint at possibilities of better treatment and therapy options while debunking persistent cultural myths that surround the mental illness.

Tagsschizophrenia, mental illness, mental disorder, new research