Identification of a potential bipolar risk haplotype in the gene encoding the winged-helix transcription factor RFX4

The gene encoding the transcription factor RFX4 represents an excellent neurobiological and positional candidate gene for Bipolar disorder due to the potential involvement of RFX4 proteins in the regulation of circadian rhythms and the proximity of the locus to numerous linkage signals on chromosome 12q23. In this study we have sought to identify common variants within the gene, which might confer risk to the disease in our large UK Caucasian sample of Bipolar patients (676 DSMIV Bipolar I probands, 690 controls). RFX4 was screened for sequence variants and the LD block structure across the genomic region determined using 22 biallelic polymorphisms (minor allele frequency >or=0.1). Through analysis of 10 haplotype-tagging markers and using a two-stage approach (subset I: 347 cases, 374 controls; subset II: 329 cases, 316 controls), we identified a haplotype at rs10778502 and ss24735177, which showed nominally significant disease association in our full sample (haplotype-specific P=0.002, global P=0.017; subset I: haplotype-specific P=0.0002, global P=0.0008; subset II: haplotype-specific P=0.572, global P=0.109). Evidence for potential disease association with mutations across the RFX4 region came also from the analysis of the nearby microsatellite D12S2072 (empirical P=0.009 in our full sample). Investigation of RFX4 brain cDNA tagged by rs10778502 provided evidence for significant allelic differences in expression (P<0.001), where some of the variance was accounted for by the genotype at ss24735177. Our findings thus indicate the potential functional relevance of the associated haplotype and now require replication in independent samples.