Recent studies conducted by scientists at Harvard University have found that people suffering from debilitating psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, share similar mutations in a common gene.

A report published on Wednesday outlined that changes in a gene called ‘complement component 4’ or ‘C4’ could explain why some 21 million schizophrenia sufferers worldwide typically have less grey matter and fewer connections in their brain activity than non-sufferers.

The same gene has previously been known to help the body’s immune system to target and eliminate infections.

The study demonstrated that schizophrenia symptoms such as cognitive difficulties, hallucinations and abnormal social behaviour were typically aligned with mutations to the C4 gene.

Dr Steve McCarroll, geneticist at Harvard and co-author of the study, said: “The basic scientific dilemma in schizophrenia and in all mental illness is that we do not know even the most basic things about how these diseases start.

“We knew about the area for a long time on the basis of genetic-association studies. But there are a lot of genes, and no one before now had identified a single gene as a risk”.

Experts hope that Harvard’s DNA study could lead to a medical breakthrough in the not-too-distant future.