Background Schizophrenia is a multifactorial complex disease that strikes approximately 1% of world population. A complex interaction between genetic and environmental factors seems to play a role in schizophrenia, and microRNAs might be involved. Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) in genes related to miRNAs biogenesis (such as DGCR8 located in the 22q11.2 region), in miRNA-encoding genomic loci (as in MIR137, classically associated to schizophrenia) or in seed match sequences of miRNAs target genes have been associated with a higher risk of developing psychiatric disorders. Although many studies on miRNAs have been conducted, few new miRNA targets are identified. In search of a better selection of target miRNAs, we propose to select miRNAs with a higher chance to be involved in schizophrenia taking as starting point SNPs associated to schizophrenia in a Brazilian sample of patients. Therefore, we aim to examine whether schizophrenia risk genes are more prone to be regulated by miRNA, identifying which miRNAs act in the regulation of the main risk genes involved in the disease. Methods The design of our study in a Brazilian mixed race sample was based on Engel Hauberg et al. study (2016). Differently, we are going to analyze an admixture casuistic, counting on 258 schizophrenia patients and 239 healthy control SNParray data. The samples were genotyped using SNParray HumanOmniExpress BeadChip (Illumina). The top 1% and 5% polymorphisms associated to schizophrenia and only those that codify proteins will be investigated regarding the regulation by miRNAs. Results The data are still under analysis. After applying quality control, 24365 variants and 6 individuals were excluded, remaining for analysis 668703 variants and 491 individuals (256 cases and 235 controls). In our preliminary results, the most significant analyzed SNPs were intergenic variants and in intronic regions and the most associated SNP presented a significance of 2.125×10-5. From the final association analysis results, we will select the SNPs at protein codifying genes and then proceed the remaining analysis. At the congress date we will present the main genes and related miRNAs probably involved in schizophrenia. Discussion This study will be the starting point to a deeper miRNA analysis. Although this is an in silico analysis, the results obtained from this study will be compared with miRNA-seq results as a study validation. As our next step, we intend to evaluate by miRNA-seq the miRNAs resulting from this analysis in serum exosome, once we already have this collected material of patients and health controls. Once the results have been confirmed, this may turn a useful method of selecting target miRNAs for new studies. It is worth remembering Engels-Hauberg et al. have recruited a Caucasian cohort and, replicating it in a mixed sample, such as the Brazilian one, will show the consistency of this method that, in a near future, may be used in studies of other diseases, whether psychiatric or not.