Failure to confirm the association between the FEZ1 gene and schizophrenia in a Japanese population

Fasciculation and elongation of protein zeta-1 (FEZ1) is a binding partner of Disrupted-In-Schizophrenia 1 (DISC1). Because the DISC1 gene is shown to be a causative gene for psychosis in a Scottish family, the FEZ1 gene may well have importance in mental disease. A previous association study that analyzed polymorphisms of the FEZ1 gene in Japanese patients with schizophrenia and control subjects found significant association of the Asp123Glu polymorphism with schizophrenia. In the present study, we examined two polymorphic markers, rs559668 and rs597570 (Asp123Glu), in the FEZ1 gene to confirm the association in 1920 Japanese patients with schizophrenia and 1920 control subjects. The power to detect an association was more than 0.98. However, we did not detect genotypic associations of either of these two single nucleotide polymorphisms with schizophrenia (p=1 and 0.79, respectively). We concluded that the missense mutation Asp123Glu of the FEZ1 gene is unlikely to play a substantial role in the genetic susceptibility to schizophrenia.