Newswise — Piscataway, New Jersey, June 16, 2026 – A new study in Genomic Psychiatry, led by Carlos Pato, MD, PhD, the Henry Rutgers Professor of Behavioral Health and executive chair of the Department of Psychiatry, at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and Michele T. Pato, MD, the inaugural director of the Rutgers Center for Genomics of Psychiatric Health and Addiction, identifies a gene variant that may be shared among family members affected by schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and autism.The study draws on more than three decades of data from the Portuguese Island Collection (PIC), an insular population in the Azores and Madeira islands. For the purposes of the study, families were considered “affected” if two or more members were diagnosed with either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.Among 173 affected families, 35.3% had members diagnosed with schizophrenia, and 36.4% had members diagnosed with bipolar disorder or other mood disorders, with or without psychosis. In 28.3% of families, multiple relatives carried a range of diagnoses.“The PIC cohort shows a common thread linking schizophrenia and bipolar disorder within families, and the risks for these different clinical presentations may be transmitted in part by a single gene,” Pato said. “However, the specific manifestation in each individual may relate to additional genetic or environmental factors.”In a field that relies heavily on symptom-based diagnosis, a biological approach could broaden considerations for treatment.“The altered biology may mean that similar or even the same treatment approaches could work across different presentations,” Pato said. “Or it may help define a core treatment strategy that requires additional interventions depending on how symptoms present.”Although more research is needed, Pato said the findings offer promise for understanding potential inherited risk within families. While not directly comparable to established genetic testing used in conditions such as breast cancer, Pato said the study offers an instructive parallel.“In some ways, it is comparable,” Pato said. “As we show in the paper, it is possible to carry the mutation and not show signs of illness.”