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Reply to “Comment on: What genes are differentially expressed in individuals with schizophrenia? A systematic review”

Molecular Psychiatry volume 28, pages 526–527 (2023)Cite this article

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TO THE EDITOR:

We appreciate the opportunity to respond to Hoffman and colleagues’ commentary on our recent systematic review of gene expression studies in schizophrenia [1]. We agree with these authors on all of the issues raised in their comments, including the critical importance of sample size and statistical power, control for potential technical and sample-specific factors that may confound associations, and the need to distinguish between gene expression that is involved in the etiology of schizophrenia as opposed to being a consequence of the disease. Whereas Hoffman and colleagues’ comments focused solely on gene expression in post-mortem brain, our review included studies in blood and other tissues, as described below.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical and Health Informatics, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Alison K. Merikangas & Laura Almasy

  2. Department of Genetics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Alison K. Merikangas & Laura Almasy

  3. Lifespan Brain Institute, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Alison K. Merikangas & Laura Almasy

Authors
  1. Alison K. Merikangas
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  2. Laura Almasy
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Contributions

AKM and LA drafted, edited, and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alison K. Merikangas.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Merikangas, A.K., Almasy, L. Reply to “Comment on: What genes are differentially expressed in individuals with schizophrenia? A systematic review”. Mol Psychiatry 28, 526–527 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-022-01821-2

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