Linkage between PICK1 Gene and Cognitive Function in Schizophrenia

• Main Authors: Yi-Ting Chen, 陳逸婷
• Other Authors: 藍先元
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/53r7v5

碩士 === 中國醫藥大學 === 臨床醫學研究所碩士班 === 102 === Background Schizophrenia is a complex brain disease. It causes cognitive deficit and profound disability. The gene of protein interacting with C kinase 1 (PICK1) has been implicated in schizophrenia in numerous studies. However, the role of its genetic variance in the cognitive dysfunction remains unclear. This study aims to explore the impact of genetic polymorphism of PICK1 on cognitive function in patients with schizophrenia. Methods We enrolled 310 patients with chronic schizophrenia. We measured their clinical manifestation, cognitive function and genotypes of two single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP, rs2076369, rs3952) of the PICK1 gene. However, 8 of them couldn’t be genotyped with this method; we finally analyzed 302 schizophrenic patients. The association between genotype and clinical symptoms was analyzed by ANOVA or nonparametric test according to the distribution of data. The score of cognitive function was standardized to T-score. ANOVA and general liner model (GLM) were used for evaluating the impact of genotype on cognitive function. Results PICK1 genetic variation can partially affect cognitive function in schizophrenic patients. While controlling gender, age, education, and illness duration, patients with the G/T genotype of rs2076369 showed better performance than the T/T homozygotes in global composite score, category fluency test, speed of processing, WMS-III-Spatial Span test (backward), working memory and managing emotions (p=0.034, p=0.035, p=0.035, p=0.030, p=0.022, p=0.041, respectively). Conclusions To our knowledge, this is the first study to suggest the variation of the PICK1 gene may influence the performance of some cognitive functions in schizophrenic patients. Further extension and replication studies are warranted.