Macrophage Migration Inhibitory Factor - 173 G/C Polymorphism is Associated With The Age of Onset and Insight in Schizophrenia in the Turkish Population

Abstract

ABSTRACT Objective To evaluate the genetic variant in the macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) −173 G/C in patients with schizophrenia (SCZ) by comparing genotype distributions of MIF −173 G/C between patients and healthy controls considering clinical parameters. Methods A sample of 118 patients with SCZ and 100 healthy volunteers were included in the study. The patients were evaluated with some scales in terms of clinical features (symptom severity, level of insight, age of onset, and treatment resistance). The polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) was used to determine gene polymorphism. Results There was a statistically significant difference between the allele frequency (G, C) distributions of SCZ patients with early- and adult-onset. The C allele frequency was significantly higher in SCZ patients with early-onset (p = .033). According to the impairment of insight, we observed statistically significant differences in genotype (GG, GC, CC) distributions between SCZ patients with good and poor insight. SCZ patients with poor insight had a higher GG genotype frequency than SCZ patients with good insight (p = .021). Again, there was a statistically significant difference between genotype groups (GG, GC/CC) regarding the age of illness onset (p = .037) and schedule for assessing the three components of insight (SATCI) score (p = .005). While the age of onset of SCZ was significantly earlier in patients with the GC/CC genotype, SATCI scores of SCZ patients with the GG genotype were significantly lower than SCZ patients with GC/CC genotype. Conclusions MIF −173 G/C polymorphism may be associated with the age of illness onset and impairment of insight in SCZ.