Sex differences in the peripheral blood transcriptome and their associations with neuroimaging and cognition in...

While clinical and biological manifestations in schizophrenia (SCZ) consistently indicate significant sex differences, the underlying mechanisms of this sex dimorphism remain incompletely understood. Recent evidence suggests that the molecular bases underlying SCZ differ between males and females, with disparities observed in cognitive tasks, genetics, and neurobiology.

To investigate sexual dimorphism in SCZ, we examined 43 (20 females/23 males) patients with SCZ and 60 (24 females/36 males) healthy controls (HC) using peripheral blood RNA-sequencing, brain resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI), and cognitive assessments.

The peripheral blood RNA-seq analysis revealed a greater burden of transcriptomic dysregulation in females with SCZ compared to males with SCZ (Female effect size >95th percentile of the male distribution, p < 0.05). This observation was supported by the differing effects of SCZ between females and males, as well as the significantly larger number of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and greater magnitude of gene expression changes observed in females versus males (p < 1 × 10^-4). Gene ontology implicated immune and epigenetic modification related pathways in these sex differences; Through multimodal integration, we identified brain regions where Spearman correlations with genePC1 differed significantly from HC to SCZ. The specific brain regions exhibiting significant correlation changes (r = -0.50-0.55, adj.p < 0.05) were largely distinct between females and males. Furthermore, the direction of correlations between these brain regions and cognitive performance differed by sex. Specifically, in females, these brain regions showed positive correlations with cognitive performance (vocabulary: r = 0.54, p = 0.01; IQ: r = 0,66, p = 0.002), whereas in males, they demonstrated negative correlations (Digit-Span: r = -0.55, p = 0.01; Digit symbol coding: r = -0.52, p = 0.01).

Our results demonstrate that, males and females with SCZ exhibit distinct degrees of peripheral blood transcriptomic dysregulation and distinct correlations between peripheral blood transcriptome and functional neuroimage. These sex-specific associations further influence cognitive performance. Collectively, our findings provide evidence for sexual dimorphism in SCZ manifested at both the peripheral blood transcriptional and neuroimaging levels, emphasizing the importance of developing sex-specific treatment strategies for this disorder.