A Systematic Biobank and Genome-Wide Association Study of Schizophrenia Risk Loci in the Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa-Fulani Populations

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of schizophrenia have been conducted predominantly in European populations, leaving African genetic architectures inadequately represented in global psychiatric genomics databases. This study establishes a psychiatric biobank and conducts the first GWAS of schizophrenia risk loci in Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa-Fulani populations in Nigeria. A multi-site case-control design will recruit 600 individuals with confirmed schizophrenia diagnoses (200 per ethnic group) and 600 matched healthy controls from tertiary psychiatric hospitals in Lagos, Enugu, and Kano. Whole blood samples will be collected in compliance with national biobank ethics protocols. Genotyping will be performed using the Illumina H3Africa array, optimized for African-ancestry populations. GWAS analyses will identify schizophrenia-associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with genome-wide significance thresholds. Ethnic-stratified and trans-ethnic meta-analyses will examine locus replication and novel variants. This study constitutes a landmark original contribution to African psychiatric genetics, addressing the severe underrepresentation of West African populations in global schizophrenia genomics research. Findings will have direct implications for transdiagnostic biomarker discovery and the development of ancestrally appropriate polygenic risk scores for Nigerian populations. Keywords: GWAS, schizophrenia, African genomics, biobank, Nigeria