title: Multi-locus association study of schizophrenia susceptibility genes with a posterior probability method.
abstract: Schizophrenia is a serious neuropsychiatric illness affecting about 1% of the world's population. It is considered a complex inheritance disorder. A number of genes are involved in combination in the etiology of the disorder. Evidence implicates the altered dopaminergic transmission in schizophrenia. In the present study, in order to identify susceptibility genes for schizophrenia in dopaminergic metabolism, we analyzed 59 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 24 genes of the dopaminergic pathway among 82 unrelated patients with schizophrenia and 108 matched normal controls. Considering that traditional single-locus association studies ignore the multigenic nature of complex diseases and do not take into account possible interactions between susceptibility genes, we proposed a multi-locus analysis method, using the posterior probability of morbidity as a measure of absolute disease risk for a multi-locus genotype combination, and developed an algorithm based on perturbation and average to detect the susceptibility multi-locus genotype combinations, as well as to repress noise and avoid false positive results at our best. A three-locus SNP genotype combination involved in the interactions of COMT and ALDH3B1 genes was detected to be significantly susceptible to schizophrenia.
authors.affiliation: Ministry of Education (MOE) Key Laboratory of Bioinformatics at Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Xiangqing
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Yanbin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Jia
authors.forename: Xuegong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Qi
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shen
authors.forename: Yanda
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D000444:Aldehyde Dehydrogenase / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D000465:Algorithms; D002394:Catechol O-Methyltransferase / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D005787:Gene Frequency; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease / Q000235:genetics*; D005838:Genotype; D020412:Multifactorial Inheritance; D016017:Odds Ratio; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D011336:Probability; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D000444:Aldehyde Dehydrogenase; D002394:Catechol O-Methyltransferase