Analysis of the association between apolipoprotein D and schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a severe, chronic and common complex debilitating mental illness with a large genetic component. Evidence to date suggests that apolipoprotein D protein may be closely related to schizophrenia. To investigate the role of the APOD gene in the etiology of schizophrenia, we genotyped three genetic polymorphisms (rs7659, rs2280520 and rs4677695) in a case-control study using subjects from the Chinese population, and altogether 425 cases and 473 controls were analyzed in the study. However, we found no significant discrepancies in allele and genotype frequencies of the three polymorphisms nor in the haplotype distribution between the cases and the controls. Our data indicate no direct evidence of association between schizophrenia and the APOD gene, and the results suggest that the three genetic polymorphisms within the APOD gene are unlikely to confer increased susceptibility to the illness in the Chinese population. Copyright (c) 2006 S. Karger AG, Basel.