Brain pH has a significant impact on human postmortem hippocampal gene expression profiles

Studies of neurobiological disorders in the brain, including schizophrenia, rely on the use of postmortem brain tissues, in which an understanding of the effects of various pre- and postmortem variables on gene expression is critical. In several different brain regions, pH has been shown to have a large effect on postmortem brain gene expression patterns. One region that has not yet been evaluated in such studies is the hippocampus, a region often implicated in schizophrenia research. In the present study, we show that postmortem brain pH is similar across different brain regions. Brain pH accounted for greater variation in hippocampal gene expression profiles than any other parameter evaluated, including gender and schizophrenia. The predictive value of brain pH in an independent sample set was also greater than the disease, demonstrating that pH represents one of the most important control parameters in human postmortem gene expression studies in schizophrenia.