Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2019 Sep 14;21(10):100.
doi: 10.1007/s11920-019-1091-3.

Non-Genetic Factors in Schizophrenia

Simona A Stilo  1   2 , Robin M Murray  3   4
Affiliations
Review

Non-Genetic Factors in Schizophrenia

Simona A Stilo et al. Curr Psychiatry Rep. .

Abstract

Purpose of review: We review recent developments on risk factors in schizophrenia.

Recent findings: The way we think about schizophrenia today is profoundly different from the way this illness was seen in the twentieth century. We now know that the etiology of schizophrenia is multifactorial and reflects an interaction between genetic vulnerability and environmental contributors. Environmental risk factors such as pregnancy and birth complications, childhood trauma, migration, social isolation, urbanicity, and substance abuse, alone and in combination, acting at a number of levels over time, influence the individual's likelihood to develop the disorder. Environmental risk factors together with the identification of a polygenic risk score for schizophrenia, research on gene-environment interaction and environment-environment interaction have hugely increased our knowledge of the disorder.

Keywords: Cannabis; Childhood trauma; Environment; Gene–environment interaction; Psychosis; Risk factors; Schizophrenia.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Simona A. Stilo declares no conflicts of interest. Robin M. Murray reports honoraria for lectures from Janssen, Sunovian, Lundbeck, and Otsuka.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Developmental cascade towards schizophrenia. CNV, copy number variations; SNPs, single nucleotide polymorphisms; ExE, environment–environment interaction; GxE, gene–environment interaction
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. International Schizophrenia C. Purcell SM, Wray NR, Stone JL, Visscher PM, O’Donovan MC, et al. Common polygenic variation contributes to risk of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Nature. 2009;460(7256):748–752. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Schizophrenia Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics C Biological insights from 108 schizophrenia-associated genetic loci. Nature. 2014;511(7510):421–427. - PMC - PubMed
    1. van Os J, Rutten BP, Poulton R. Gene-environment interactions in schizophrenia: review of epidemiological findings and future directions. Schizophr Bull. 2008;34(6):1066–1082. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Cannon M, Jones PB, Murray RM. Obstetric complications and schizophrenia: historical and meta-analytic review. Am J Psychiatry. 2002;159(7):1080–1092. - PubMed
    1. Dalman C, Thomas HV, David AS, Gentz J, Lewis G, Allebeck P. Signs of asphyxia at birth and risk of schizophrenia. Population-based case-control study. Br J Psychiatry. 2001;179:403–408. - PubMed