Association of the GRIA1 polymorphisms with schizophrenia in Korean population

Abstract

Glutamate receptors are the predominant excitatory neurotransmitter receptors in the mammalian brain and are activated in a variety of normal neurophysiologic processes. The GRIA1, encoding for one (GluR1) of the four (GluR1-4) ionotropic AMPA receptor subunits, has been suggested for its possible relationship in schizophrenia. We did case-control association study of 24 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in GRIA1 gene to examine the association of GRIA1 gene and schizophrenia in Korean population. The genotype distributions of 2 SNPs of 24 SNPs in GRIA1 gene were significant under the recessive model (p=0.0016, 0.0017). Odds ratio of the 2 SNPs are less than 0.5 suggesting possible protective role of GRIA1 SNPs againsts schizophrenia. TAA haplotype of block1 was significantly different (p=0.0075), and ACGT haplotype of block 6 was significantly different (p=0.0047) between schizophrenia patients and controls. Our study shows that some intronic SNPs and haplotype patterns in GRIA1 gene are associated with schizophrenia, suggesting the possible protective role for schizophrenia.