Large rare Deletions in Ashkenazi Jewish schizophrenia cases vs controls

ABSTRACT: Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric illness that affects ~1% of the population and has a strong genetic underpinning. Recently, genome wide analysis of copy number variation (CNV) has implicated rare and de novo events as important in schizophrenia. Here we report a genome-wide analysis of 245 schizophrenia cases and 490 controls, all of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. Since many studies have found an excess burden of large, rare deletions in cases, we limited our analysis to deletions over 500 kb in size. We observed seven large, rare deletions in cases with 57% of these being de novo. We focused on one 836 kb de novo deletion at chromosome 3q29 that falls within a 1.3–1.6 Mb deletion previously identified in children with intellectual disability (ID) and autism, as increasing evidence suggests an overlap of specific rare CNVs between autism and schizophrenia. By combining our data with prior CNV studies of schizophrenia and analysis of the data of the Genetic Association Information Network (GAIN), we identified six 3q29 deletions among 7,545 schizophrenic subjects and one among 39,748 controls, resulting in a statistically significant association with schizophrenia (p = 0.02) and an odds ratio estimate of 17 (95% CI: 1.36–1198.4). Moreover, this 3q29 deletion region contains two linkage peaks from prior schizophrenia family studies, and the minimal deletion interval implicates 20 annotated genes, including PAK2 and DLG1, both paralogous to X-linked ID genes and now strong candidates for schizophrenia susceptibility.

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

PROVIDER: GSE23201 | GEO | 2010/08/06

SECONDARY ACCESSION(S): PRJNA131535

REPOSITORIES: GEO