Association study of PDE4B gene variants in Scandinavian schizophrenia and bipolar disorder multicenter case-control samples.

The phosphodiesterase 4B (PDE4B), which is involved in cognitive function in animal models, is a candidate susceptibility gene for schizophrenia (SZ) and bipolar disorder (BP). Variations in PDE4B have previously been associated with SZ, with a suggested gender-specific effect. We have genotyped and analyzed 40 and 72 tagging single nucleotide polymorphisms (tagSNPs) in SZ and BP multicenter samples, respectively, from the Scandinavian Collaboration on Psychiatric Etiology (SCOPE), involving 837 SZ cases and 1,473 controls plus 594 BP cases and 1,421 partly overlapping controls. Six and 16 tagSNPs were nominally associated (0.0005 < or = P < or = 0.05) with SZ and BP, respectively, in the combined samples or in gender-specific subgroups. None of these findings remained significant after correction for multiple testing. However, a number of tagSNPs found to be nominally associated with SZ and BP were located in a high LD region spanning the splice site of PDE4B3, an isoform with altered brain expression in BP patients. Four tagSNPs were associated with SZ in women, but none in men, in agreement with the previously reported gender-specific effect. Proxies of two nominally associated SNPs in the SZ sample were also associated with BP, but the genotypic effect (i.e., homozygosity for the minor allele), pointed in opposite directions. Finally, four SNPs were found to be associated with Positive And Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) positive symptom scores in a subgroup of SZ patients (n = 153) or SZ female patients (n = 70). Further studies are needed to evaluate the implicated PDE4B region of interest, for potential involvement in SZ and BP susceptibility.

Evidence for a possible association of neurotrophin receptor (NTRK-3) gene polymorphisms with hippocampal function and schizophrenia.

Altered neurodevelopment and plasticity are implicated in schizophrenia pathology. Based on the important role of neurotrophic factors in brain development and plasticity as well as their extensive expression in hippocampal areas, we hypothesized that a variation in the neurotrophin receptor 3 gene (NTRK-3) is associated to hippocampal function and schizophrenia. Thirty-three tagging NTRK-3 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were genotyped in 839 schizophrenia patients and 1473 healthy controls. SNPs that were significantly associated with schizophrenia were evaluated in subgroups of the sample with neuropsychological test battery (n=104 patients and 175 controls) and functional magnetic resonance imaging tests of hippocampal function (n=36 controls). rs999905 was nominally significantly associated with schizophrenia and the haplotype block that included markers rs999905 and rs4887348 remained significant after permutation tests. These gene variants are also related to in vivo brain function in healthy control subjects, shown by a significant association with hippocampal activation during an encoding task. The present results, although not robust, suggest that the NTRK-3 gene influences hippocampal function and may modify the risk for schizophrenia.

The neural correlates of cognitive control in bipolar I disorder: an fMRI study of medial frontal cortex activation during a Go/No-go task.

In addition to dysregulation of mood, bipolar I disorder (BD I) is characterized by abnormalities in the execution of cognitive control. Hypoactivation of a specific sub-region in the cognitive control network, located in the medial frontal cortex, has been described among BD I patients. The aim of this study was to investigate whether patients with BD I showed decreased activation in this brain region as compared to healthy controls when performing a cognitive control task. Twenty-four BD I patients and 24 healthy controls performed a Go/No-go task during a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) session. Performance and response times were recorded. The BD I subjects had significantly slower response times and more patients made errors of omission compared to the healthy controls during the task. Both BD I subjects and healthy controls demonstrated activations in the brain region of interest during the task, but analyses revealed no statistically significant differences between groups. Although the patients display some deviances in behavioural measures, this study reveals no significant differences between BD I subjects and healthy controls in recruitment of the medial frontal cortex during a Go/No-go task.