An association study of apolipoprotein E gene and Chinese schizophrenic patients

Abstract

Objective To investigate the association between apolipoprotein E (ApoE) gene and schizophrenia in Han Chinese. Methods The polymorphism of ApoE gene in 100 schizophrenic in-patients (50 men and 50 women) and 64 normal controls (32 men and 32 women) were genotyped with polymerase chain reaction and restriction fragment length polymorphism techniques. Results There was no difference in the genotype distributions of patients(e2/2,1%;e2/3,6%;e2/4,1%;e3/3,78%;e3/4,13%;e4/4,1%) and controls(e2/2,0;e2/3,13%;e2/4,3%;e3/3,64%;e3/4,19%;e4/4,2%)(P＞0.05). There was no difference in the allele frequencies of patients(e2,5%;e3,88%;e4,8%) and controls(e2,8%;e3,80%;e4,13%)(P＞0.05). There was significant difference in the genotype distributions of female patients and female controls. Compared to controls, the female patients with schizophrenia had significantly increased e3/3 genotype (RR=3.84,P＜0.05) and e3 allele (RR=3.06,P＜0.05) . Conclusion The influence of the ApoE gene on the susceptibility of schizophrenia may be different between the genders of patients. Women with e3 allele may have an increased risk of schizophrenia. Key words: Schizophrenia; ApoE gene; Association study