Monday, July 10, 2006

ASPM and schizophrenia-- nada   posted by JP @ 7/10/2006 01:09:00 PM
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Regular readers know that ASPM is a microencephaly gene under selection in humans, though the particular pressure driving the selection is unknown. A group of Spanish researchers decided to test whether there is an association between variants of the gene and schizophrenia. The result: nothing.

Of course, with only 233 cases and 161 controls, the actual power to detect an effect was probably around zero (not that that ever stopped anyone from publishing before). There are certainly many genetic factors that play a role in the disease, so any well-designed study should be big enough to detect multiple weak effects. And the authors note this is a preliminary study; presumably there will be larger sample sizes in the future.

Related: GNXP on ASPM

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