Genetic Research into Childhood Onset Psychosis
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Genetic Research into Childhood Onset Psychosis
IRAS ID
170403
Contact name
Anna Need
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Imperial College London
Duration of Study in the UK
5 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
The goal of this project is to recruit a cohort of individuals in the UK that have been diagnosed with a psychotic illness at age 13 or younger and to identify genetic variants that contribute to or cause the psychiatric illness.
Recent genetic discoveries have identified a number of candidate genes, as well as mutation types that are more common in patients with neuropsychiatric illnesses such as autism, schizophrenia and epilepsy. In some cases, these identified mutations have indicated new treatments that would not otherwise have been tried and that have led to remarkable improvement in symptoms. Childhood onset psychotic illness has been shown to have a stronger genetic basis than adult onset forms of psychotic illness and there is evidence that a greater proportion of patients have severe, highly penetrant genetic mutations. Our hypothesis is that some individuals with childhood onset psychosis will have highly penetrant predisposing genetic variants that may lead to specific genetic diagnoses for the affected individuals, novel treatment options and/or insight into later onset more common forms of psychosis such as schizophrenia.
In this study, we will identify up to 100 patients with childhood onset psychotic illness from medical facilities in the UK. We will collect DNA, family history and medical records from them and their relatives, and perform diagnostic interviews and cognitive testing to obtain detailed information on their psychiatric health. We will then perform genome-wide analysis to search for rare genetic variants that are likely to be contributing to their psychiatric illness.
We will also create a research database so that these rare and valuable families can be contacted for other research studies if they so wish.
REC name
South Central - Oxford A Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/SC/0206
Date of REC Opinion
15 Jun 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion