25.10.2012
Recently, the new discovery was made in the world of psychiatry: Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have found that drug addiction and schizophrenia have some genetic roots. The article about it was published in the latest issue of the journal “Biological Psychiatry”.
The essence of the discovery is that the results of long-term studies of two groups of subjects discovered the gene, which mutation plays a major role in the development of the drug addiction. The same gene with the same mutation was found in patients, suffering from schizophrenia. Thus, the first hypothesis of the close relation of brain damage with the presence of a risk to drug addiction was proven.
It is interesting that this gene is located in the body of every person, and being in a good condition, it carries out a number of important functions in the nerve cells with no threats presented.
For the accuracy of the experiment, scientists selected 384 African-American families and 354 families of the Caucasoid type. The study of the family tree of each of the families allowed to reveal those, whose relatives were drug addicts. Statistical analysis of the data allowed to determine the specific gene, located on the eighth chromosome, which showed a clear dependence of the increased level of the cannabinoid drug addiction and changes in the structure of the gene.
The previous studies have more than once revealed a similar dependence, but previously it was believed that cannabis smoking causes the development of schizophrenia.
