MALE BIOLOGICAL CLOCK IS THE KEY TO MUCH AUTISM

"Paternal age is consistently associated with increased risk of schizophrenia (Brown et al, 2002; Dalman & Allebeck, 2002; Malaspina et al, 2002; Byrne et al, 2003; El-Saadi et al, 2004; Sipos et al, 2004; Tsuchiya et al, 2005). Paternal age is also associated with increased rates of several types of de novo germ-line mutations (Crow, 2003)."

Br J Psychiatry. 2007 Mar ;190 :194-9 17329737 (P,S,E,B,D) Schizophrenia: a common disease caused by multiple rare alleles.

[My paper] Jon M McClellan, Ezra Susser, Mary-Claire King
Department of Psychiatry, Box 356560, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. drjack@u.washington.edu.
Schizophrenia is widely held to stem from the combined effects of multiple common polymorphisms, each with a small impact on disease risk. We suggest an alternative view: that schizophrenia is highly heterogeneous genetically and that many predisposing mutations are highly penetrant and individually rare, even specific to single cases or families. This ;common disease - rare alleles' hypothesis is supported by recent findings in human genomics and by allelic and locus heterogeneity for other complex traits. We review the implications of this model for gene discovery research in schizophrenia.