Abstract
Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder which influences around 1 % of the worldwide population. Differences between male and female patients with schizophrenia have been noted. There is an earlier age of onset in males compared with females with this diagnosis, and in addition, there are differences in symptom profiles between the sexes. The underlying molecular mechanism of sex difference remains unclear. Here we present a comprehensive analysis to reveal the sex differences in gene expression in schizophrenia with stringent statistics criteria. We compiled a data set consisting of 89 male controls, 90 male schizophrenia patients, 35 female controls and 32 female schizophrenia patients from six independent studies of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in postmortem brain. When we tested for a sex by diagnosis interaction on gene expression, 23 genes were up-regulated and 23 genes were down-regulated in the male group (q-value < 0.05), several genes are related to energy metabolism, while 4 genes are located on sex chromosome. No genes were statistically significant in the female group when multiple testing correction were conducted (q-value <0.05), most likely due to the small sample size. Our protocol and results from the male group provide a starting point for identifying the underlying different mechanism between male and female schizophrenia patients.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12918-015-0250-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder with a population frequency of approximately 1 % [30]
To identify the biological factors involved in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia and how they are differentially influenced in the sexes, we have investigated microarray expression data from the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in postmortem brain
The age and postmortem interval (PMI) is well matched between schizophrenia and control groups while brain pH shows a significant difference between two groups (Table 2)
Summary
Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder with a population frequency of approximately 1 % [30]. The pathophysiology of schizophrenia is likely to be different between males and females. Several studies indicate that men have a slightly higher incidence of schizophrenia compared with women. Males have an earlier age of onset of schizophrenia, between 18–25 years of age, compared with the female age of onset which is 25–35 years [20]. The symptoms exhibited by male and female patients with schizophrenia differ. Males tend to have a greater vulnerability to negative symptoms and traits of disorganization, while females more frequently exhibit depressive symptoms [20].
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