Chromosomal fragile site expression in lymphocytes from patients with schizophrenia |
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Authors: | Chia-Hsiang Chen Hsuan-Hui Shih Sheng Wang-Wuu John Jen Tai K-D Wuu |
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Institution: | (1) Division of Psychiatry, Tzu-Chi General Hospital, Hualien City, Taiwan, ROC, TW;(2) Department of Human Genetics, Tzu-Chi College of Medicine, Hualien City, Taiwan, ROC, TW;(3) Institute of Genetics, National Yang Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC Tel.: +886-2-2826-7100, Fax: +886-2-2826-4719, TW;(4) Institute of Statistics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC, TW |
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Abstract: | Schizophrenia is a common complex mental disorder. The lifetime prevalence of this disease is about 1% across different populations.
The etiology is still unknown despite decades of intensive study. This report is aimed at studying the relationship between
chromosomal fragile sites and the etiology of schizophrenia. Lymphocytes of 72 schizophrenic patients and 66 healthy controls
were cultured in M medium, which is deficient in folic acid, and in medium RPMI1640 with distamycin A. G-banding was carried
out on 100 metaphases of each individual. Fragile sites were characterized as specific chromosomal bands that exhibit nonrandom
gaps or breaks. Culture in M medium resulted in significant differences in the total number of chromosomal lesions and the
total number of cells with chromosomal lesions between patients and controls (P<0.001), while no difference was noted after exposure to distamycin A. In the case of M medium, 17 bands in both patients
and controls were recognized as expressing fragile sites nonrandomly using a statistical method based on the relationship
of the binomial and F distributions. Further analysis using Fisher’s exact test revealed a significant excess of expression
of a rare fragile site at 2q11.2 among patients compared with controls (P<0.05). In the case of distamycin A induction, 13 bands were identified as having nonrandom expression of fragile sites using
the same statistical method. A significant excess expression of a fragile site at 9q12 was identified among patients compared
with controls by applying Fisher’s exact test (P<0.001). Thus, our data suggest that chromosomal bands 2q11.2 and 9q12 are interesting regions that may harbor important genes
associated with schizophrenia.
Received: 21 July 1998 / Accepted: 19 September 1998 |
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