Do nuclear-encoded core subunits of mitochondrial complex I confer genetic susceptibility to schizophrenia in Han Chinese populations?

Schizophrenia is one of the most prevalent psychiatric disorders with complex genetic etiology. Accumulating evidence suggests that energy metabolism and oxidative stress play important roles in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Dysfunction of mitochondrial respiratory chain and altered expression of complex I subunits were frequently reported in schizophrenia. To investigate whether nuclear-encoded core subunit genes of mitochondrial complex I are associated with schizophrenia, we performed a genetic association study in Han Chinese. In total, 46 tag single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from 7 nuclear-encoded core genes of mitochondrial complex I were genotyped in 918 schizophrenia patients and 1042 healthy controls. We also analyzed these SNPs in a large sample mainly composed of Europeans through using the available GWAS datasets from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC). No significant associations were detected between these SNPs and schizophrenia in Han Chinese and the PGC data set. However, we observed nominal significant associations of 2 SNPs in the NDUFS1 gene and 4 SNPs in the NDUFS2 gene with early onset schizophrenia (EOS), but none of these associations survived the Bonferroni correction. Taken together, our results suggested that common SNPs in the nuclear-encoded core subunit genes of mitochondrial complex I may not confer genetic susceptibility to schizophrenia.

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