Association Study Identifying a New Susceptibility Gene (AUTS2) for Schizophrenia

International Journal of Molecular Sciences

Bao Zhang¹  Yue-Hong Xu¹  Shu-Guang Wei²  Hong-Bo Zhang²  Dong-Ke Fu²  Zu-Fei Feng²  Fang-Lin Guan²  Yong-Sheng Zhu²  Sheng-Bin Li¹ 

[1] College of Forensic Science, Health Science Center, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710061, China;

关键词: AUTS2 gene;    SNP;    schizophrenia;    association study;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijms151119406

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Schizophrenia (SCZ) is a severe and debilitating mental disorder, and the specific genetic factors that underlie the risk for SCZ remain elusive. The autism susceptibility candidate 2 (AUTS2) gene has been reported to be associated with autism, suicide, alcohol consumption, and heroin dependence. We hypothesized that AUTS2 might be associated with SCZ. In the present study, three polymorphisms (rs6943555, rs7459368, and rs9886351) in the AUTS2 gene were genotyped in 410 patients with SCZ and 435 controls using polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) and forced PCR-RFLP methods. We detected an association between SCZ and the rs6943555 genotype distribution (odds ratio (OR) = 1.363, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.848–2.191, p = 0.001). The association remained significant after adjusting for gender, and a significant effect (p = 0.001) was observed among the females. In the present study, rs6943555 was determined to be associated with female SCZ. Our results confirm previous reports which have suggested that rs6943555 might elucidate the pathogenesis of schizophrenia and play an important role in its etiology.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.