No relationship between 2',3'-cyclic nucleotide 3'-phosphodiesterase and schizophrenia in the Chinese Han population: an expression study and meta-analysis

Ronglin Che,Guoquan Zhou,Jing Zhang,Zhiyun Wei,Xinzhi Zhao,Yongyong Shi,Peirong Huang,Ke Huang,Lin He,Wei Tang,Jianjun Gao,Zhao Zhang

doi:10.1186/1471-2350-10-31

Abstract

Background2',3'-Cyclic nucleotide 3'-phosphodiesterase (CNP), one of the promising candidate genes for schizophrenia, plays a key part in the oligodendrocyte function and in myelination. The present study aims to investigate the relationship between CNP and schizophrenia in the Chinese population and the effect of different factors on the expression level of CNP in schizophrenia.MethodsFive CNP single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were investigated in a Chinese Han schizophrenia case-control sample set (n = 180) using direct sequencing. The results were included in the following meta-analysis. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was conducted to examine CNP expression levels in peripheral blood lymphocytes.ResultsFactors including gender, genotype, sub-diagnosis and antipsychotics-treatment were found not to contribute to the expression regulation of the CNP gene in schizophrenia. Our meta-analysis produced similar negative results.ConclusionThe results suggest that the CNP gene may not be involved in the etiology and pathology of schizophrenia in the Chinese population.

Highlights

There is accumulating evidence pointing to abnormalities in oligodendrocyte function and myelination as critical factors in the etiology and pathology of schizophrenia[1,2]
Byne et al found Cyclic nucleotide 3'-phosphodiesterase (CNP) to be more highly expressed in females than males across all nuclei, suggesting that other factors such as gender may be involved in oligodendrocyte functions linked to schizophrenia[13]
Our results suggest that expression levels of CNP in schizophrenic patients are lower by only 10% compared to unaffected controls, an insignificant difference

Summary

Introduction

There is accumulating evidence pointing to abnormalities in oligodendrocyte function and myelination as critical factors in the etiology and pathology of schizophrenia[1,2]. BMC Medical Genetics 2009, 10:31 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2350/10/31 indicated significantly reduced expression levels of oligodendrocyte and myelin-related genes in the brains of schizophrenics compared with unaffected controls [3,4,5,6,7]. Lower expression levels of CNP have been detected in the postmortem brains of schizophrenic patients[3,7,9]. Tkachev et al found that the brains of schizophrenia and bipolar patients showed downregulation of key oligodendrocyte and myelination genes, as well as of transcription factors that regulate these genes, compared with control brains[9]. In post-mortem studies of the anterior frontal cortex Flynn et al found lower immunoreactivity of protein encoded by the CNP gene in schizophrenia patients (P = 0.05)[10]. Byne et al found CNP to be more highly expressed in females than males across all nuclei, suggesting that other factors such as gender may be involved in oligodendrocyte functions linked to schizophrenia[13]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion