Nature, Nurture, and the Polygenic Risk Score for Schizophrenia

Technological progress is reshaping thenature versus nurture debate of disease causation. Fifty years ago, psychiatrists used to argue over whether schizophrenia was caused by a single gene or some unknown environmental factor. We now know that there exist a range of component causes, or risk factors, for schizophrenia, both genetic and environmental. So, what do we argue about now? Often the relative importance of the 2 sets of factors. The favorite measure of geneticists has been heritability, often quoted as 60% –80% for schizophrenia, but this disregards the evidence that heritability estimates are inaccurate in the presence of gene-environment correlations or interactions.1
Source: Schizophrenia Bulletin - Category: Psychiatry Source Type: research