Researchers confirmed that schizophrenia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) are related to each other. They shared the same genetic factors that increase the risks of both conditions.

The findings caused the researchers to view ALS as a disease of brain connections instead of individual brain cells. In that way, they could develop therapies specific for the disease to prevent the networks of the brain from failing. The connection of schizophrenia and ALS led the research team to end the division of brain diseases into neurological and psychiatric conditions. The study published in the journal Nature Communications.

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The researchers at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland studied the genetics of 13,000 patients with ALS and 30,000 patients with schizophrenia. They discovered that 14 percent of the genes associated with the two conditions overlap, and their genetic correlation is 14 percent as well. The conditions viewed separately before, but researchers are now convinced that ALS and schizophrenia are related to each other.

According to the professor of Neurology at Trinity and the senior author of the study, Orla Hardiman, ALS/MND (Motor Neuron Disease) is a complicated condition than previously thought. Upon combining the clinical works and studies using MRI and EEG, researchers are convinced that ALS in not just a disorder of individual nerve cells. It is a condition of how the nerve cells talk to one another as part of a larger network. Also, they found that some of the family members of patients with ALS developed schizophrenia or died from suicide. 

Although the neurological and psychiatric conditions vary in clinical presentations and characteristic, the results have proved that biological pathways triggered both conditions to be more similar, Dr. Russell McLaughlin said, an assistant professor of genome analysis at Trinity and lead author of the study.

Instead of believing that ALS is brain cell degeneration and finding for a magic bullet for treatment, it should be viewed similarly to schizophrenia which is a problem of disruptions in connectivity between different regions of the brain. Furthermore, the drugs should stabilize the failing brain networks.