A study published in JAMA Psychiatry compared individuals with schizophrenia from the UK Biobank with those recruited from clinical settings. The UK Biobank participants showed less severe disease genotypes, higher education levels, and employment rates compared to clinically recruited participants. The study found that volunteer-based biobanks provide insights into less severe forms of illnesses like schizophrenia due to ascertainment biases in clinical settings. The UK Biobank participants had lower rates of smoking, were more likely to be male, and had higher education levels. Overall, the study suggests that including less severely affected cases in research can enhance representation of the full spectrum of illness severity in schizophrenia studies.
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People with schizophrenia included in biobanks may be less severely affected
