Background: Schizophrenia is a chronic psychiatric disorder with a strong genetic component. Several recent published studies have reported that the mRNA expression level of quaking homolog, KH domain RNA binding (QKI) is down regulated in individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Methods: We were interested in the genetic variants around the promoter region of QKI and selected seven variants in this region, namely rs4263561, rs3904720, rs387504, rs3763197, rs7772756, rs7758706 and rs4709716. For the study we recruited 288 individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia and 288 control subjects. All the recruits were from Shanghai and were Han Chinese in origin.
Results: No individual SNP nor any haplotype was found to be associated with schizophrenia.
Conclusions: These results suggest that the variants within the promoter region of QKI gene are unlikely to play a major role in susceptibility to schizophrenia in the Chinese population.