Heritability of cerebral glutamate levels and their association with schizophrenia spectrum disorders: a [H]-spectroscopy twin study.

Research findings implicate cerebral glutamate in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, including genetic studies reporting associations with glutamatergic neurotransmission. The extent to which aberrant glutamate levels can be explained by genetic factors is unknown, and if glutamate can serve as a marker of genetic susceptibility for schizophrenia remains to be established. We investigated the heritability of cerebral glutamate levels and whether a potential association with schizophrenia spectrum disorders could be explained by genetic factors.