No association between the SNP rs1625579 in miR-137 gene and schizophrenia in Iranian population

Abstract

Background: Schizophrenia is a common and severe neuropsychiatric  disorder with symptoms such as hallucination, delusion and mental  disease. Among candidate genes for schizophrenia, miR-137 gene has been recently suggested to contribute to schizophrenia by genome-wide association study (GWAS) and a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs1625579 (G>T) as a presumed risk allele within an intron of miR-137 gene has been contributed by schizophrenia. Since mir-137 is a  considerable gene in the performance of neural systems, the present study dealt with the association between SNP rs1625579 in miR- 137 gene and schizophrenia in Iranian patients.

Aim of study: This study aimed to evaluate the association between SNP rs1625579 in miR-137 gene and schizophrenia in Iranian patients.

Methods: Hoping to identify a single-nucleotide polymorphism as a possible locus for schizophrenia, we carried out this case-control study on 80 blood samples collected from individuals suffering from schizophrenia and 48 healthy controls. DNA was extracted from the samples, and the frequency of the polymorphisms was analyzed using ARMS-PCR method. Finally, the products were detected on 1.5% agarose gel electrophoresis.

Results: The analysis on the data showed that 43.75% of the patients and 37.5% of the controls were mutant homozygous and 56.25% of the patients and 62.5% of controls were heterozygous. In addition, 0.0% of the patients and 0.0% of the controls were normal homozygous. Both the genotype (p = .48 > .0 5) and allele (p = .5 > .05) distribution of the rs1625579 SNP has no significant difference between patients and controls.

Conclusion: There was no significant relationship between rs1625579 and the incidence of schizophrenia. To the best of our knowledge, this is first study in Iran that assesses the frequency of the polymorphism among Iranian patients. However, further studies with more samples are necessary