For years, the genetic story of schizophrenia has been built on an uneven foundation. Most large-scale studies have drawn heavily from people of European ancestry, leaving vast portions of human genetic diversity underrepresented. That imbalance has shaped not only what scientists know about schizophrenia, but also what they have missed.
A new genome-wide association study, published in Nature,1 shifts that landscape. By analyzing genetic data from individuals of African ancestry at an unprecedented scale, researchers have identified more than 100 genomic regions linked to schizophrenia that were not clearly detected before. The result is both a trove of new findings and a clearer message: while specific risk variants differ across populations, the biological systems disrupted by schizophrenia appear strikingly similar worldwide.
