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Association study of polymorphisms in the GluR6 kainate receptor gene (GRIK2) with schizophrenia
Hiroki Shibata1, Atsushi Shibata, Hideaki Ninomiya
1Division of Disease Genes, Research Center for Genetic Information, Medical Institute of Bioregulation, Kyushu University, 3-1-1 Maidashi, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka 812-8582, Japan.
Abstract:
The glutamatergic dysfunction hypothesis of schizophrenia suggests genes involved in glutamatergic transmission as candidates for schizophrenia-susceptibility genes. The GluR6 kainate receptor gene GRIK2 is located on chromosome 6q16.3-q21, a schizophrenia susceptibility region, as suggested by multiple linkage studies. We examined 15 SNPs evenly distributed in the entire GRIK2 region (>700 kb) in Japanese patients with schizophrenia (n=100) and controls (n=100). Neither genotype nor allele frequency showed a significant association with the disorder. We constructed 2-SNP haplotypes from the 15 SNPs. Although we observed three long linkage disequilibrium blocks (>150 kb) within the GRIK2 region, none of the pairwise haplotypes showed a significant association with the disorder. Therefore, we conclude that GRIK2 does not play a major role in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia in the Japanese population.