Recently, we undertook a GWAS of 479 UK schizophrenia cases and 2937 controls(4) with follow up of the strongest findings in approximately 17,000 subjects. In the combined dataset of around 20,000 subjects, the SNP with the strongest evidence for association (P=1.61 ×10−7) to schizophrenia was rs1344706 within ZNF804A (encoding zinc finger protein 804A). While this falls short of a widely accepted threshold for genome wide significant association of P < 7.2 × 10−8(8), we did obtain evidence that surpasses this (P = 9.96 × 10−9) when the phenotype was broadened to include patients with bipolar disorder, a phenotype for which there is considerable overlap in clinical features and increasing epidemiological and molecular genetic evidence for shared genetic risk with schizophrenia(9). Subsequently independent associations between schizophrenia and the same allele of rs1344706 have been reported by the International Schizophrenia Consortium(5), The Irish Case/Control Study of Schizophrenia(10), and the SGENE-plus consortium(11). In of a total of over 5000 patients with psychiatric disorders, the latter(11) also reported three copy number variants (CNVs) at the ZNF804A locus, a deletion in an individual with schizophrenia,
