Gene expression and methylation analysis on MBP, TCF4, EGR1 genes in the blood of patients with schizophrenia and its psychopathology, intelligence and cognitive impairments

Introduction: Schizophrenia (SCZ), with a prevalence of 0.5 to 1 percent among the population, is considered asone of the most serious and debilitating mental disorders. The diagnosis of SCZ is essentially based onphenotypic examinations and trying to find the most reliable biomarkers is still going on. In this study, wecompared the expression of MBP, TCF4, EGR1 genes in the peripheral blood of patients with schizophrenia andhealthy controls .In addition, we investigated the differentially expressed genes with respect to a) DNAmethylation, b) the correlation between gene expression with psychopathology, cognitive and intellectualimpairments.Methods: 70 unmedicated schizophrenia patients were selected as the case group, alongside with 72 healthysubjects as the control group. Expression levels of 3 genes were quantified with SYBR Green. For methylationanalysis, qMSP method was performed.Results: Our results revealed that the MBP mRNA level is significantly higher and TCF4 mRNA level issignificantly lower in the case group. Moreover, it was found that patients have a weaker function in allpsychopathology, cognitive and intellectual assessments.Conclusion: In conclusion, the mRNA level of MBP and TCF4 seems to be associated with SCZ, itspsychopathology and intellectual and cognitive impairments in Iranian patients. A correlation between reductionin TCF4 expression and DNA hyper methylation of the TCF4 promoter in SCZ patients suggests that anepigenetically defined hypo-activity of TCF4 may be linked to SCZ pathogenesis. Furthermore, this epigeneticmark in DNA extracted blood can be considered as one of the key determinants in a panel of diagnostic and/ortherapeutic biomarkers for SCZ.

کلیدواژه ها:

Schizophrenia ، TCF4 ، MBP ، PANSS ، Psychopathology ، Methylation