An association between PLA2G6 and PLA2G4C gene polymorphisms and schizophrenia risk and illness severity in a Croatian population

Abstract

We investigated the allele and genotype frequency of the rs4375 and rs1549637 polymorphisms in phospholipase A2 (PLA2)G6 and PLA2G4C genes in 203 patients with schizophrenia and 191 controls in a Croatian population. We hypothesized that these polymorphic variations might influence the age of schizophrenia onset and Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale psychopathology (PANSS) data. We detected a significant overrepresentation of the PLA2G6-CT and PLA2G4C-AT genotype combination in patients compared with controls (14.7% vs. 7.3%, P < 0.05). The combined PLA2G6/PLA2G4C heterozygosity was associated with about a two-fold higher schizophrenia risk. We found no significant influence of the PLA2G6 and PLA2G4C polymorphisms on mean age at first hospital admission (P > 0.05) and that the investigated polymorphisms significantly influenced the clinical psychopathology only in male patients. The PLA2G4C polymorphism accounted for approximately 12% of negative symptom severity; whereas, the PLA2G6/PLA2G4C interaction contributed to a similar extent to total PANSS symptom variations.

Keywords: Age of onset; PLA2G4C gene polymorphism; PLA2G6 gene polymorphism; Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale; Schizophrenia.