Evaluation of the Relationship between the Znf804A Single Nucleotide Polymorphism Rs1344706 a/c Variant and Schizophrenia Subtype in Han Chinese Patients

Abstract

Recent genome wide association studies (GWASs) assessing the relationship between schizophrenia (SZ) and the ZNF804A gene, particularly the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs1344706, have yielded conflicting results. Schizophrenia is a heterogeneous disorder, so it is possible that an association may be restricted to specific SZ subtypes and that population heterogeneity may obscure a contribution of ZNF804A allelic variation to SZ risk. We thus evaluated the association between rs1344706 and different clinical SZ subtypes in a large Han Chinese patient population. The rs1344706 genotype was determined in 1,025 SZ patients and 977 healthy controls using polymerase chain reaction restriction fragment length polymorphisms (PCR-RFLPs). The clinical SZ subtypes included paranoid, catatonic, disintegrated, and undifferentiated, diagnosed according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-Fourth Edition IV (DSM-IV). No significant differences in genotype and allele frequencies were found between controls and either the total SZ population (A > C, chi2 = 4.339, 2.994; p = 0.227, 0.087, respectively) or paranoid SZ patients (chi2 = 2.053, 0.002; p = 0.562, 0.973, respectively). However, there was a significant association between genotype frequency and SZ subtype (chi2 = 12.632, p = 0.049). We found no evidence that the ZNF804A SNP rs1344706 is a susceptibility locus for SZ. However, conflicting results from previous association studies may be due to genetic heterogeneity between different patient SZ subtypes.