title: No evidence for the presence of genetic variants predisposing to psychotic disorders on the non-deleted 22q11.2 allele of VCFS patients.
abstract: The velo-cardio-facial syndrome (VCFS) is caused by hemizygous deletions on chromosome 22q11.2. The VCFS phenotype is complex and characterized by frequent occurrence of neuropsychiatric symptoms with up to 25-30% of cases suffering from psychotic disorders compared with only ~1% in the general population (odds ratio≈20-25). This makes the 22q11.2 deletion one of the most prominent risk factors for schizophrenia. However, its penetrance for neuropsychiatric phenotypes is incomplete suggesting that additional risk factors are required for disease development. These additional risk factors could lie anywhere on the genome, but by reducing the normal diploid to a haploid state, the 22q11.2 deletion could result in the unmasking of otherwise recessive alleles or functional variants on the non-deleted 22q11.2 allele. To test this hypothesis, we captured and sequenced the whole 22q11.2 non-deleted region in 88 VCFS patients with (n=40) and without (n=48) psychotic disorders to identify genetic variation that could increase the risk for schizophrenia. Single nucleotide variants (SNVs), small insertions/deletions (indels) and copy number variants were called and their distributions were compared between the two diagnostic groups using variant-, gene- and region-based association tests. None of these tests resulted in statistical evidence for the existence of a genetic variation in the non-deleted allele that would increase schizophrenia risk in VCFS patients. Power analysis showed that our study was able to achieve >80% statistical power to detect association of a risk variant with an odd ratio of ⩾22. However, it is certainly under-powered to detect risk variant of smaller effect sizes. Our study did not provide evidence that genetic variants of very large effect size located on the non-deleted 22q1.2 allele in VCFS patients increase the risk for developing psychotic disorders. Variants with smaller effects may be located in the remaining 22q11.2 allele and elsewhere in the genome. Therefore, whole exome or even genome sequencing for larger sample size would appear to be the next logical steps in the search for the genetic modifiers of the 22q11.2-deletion neuropsychiatric phenotype.
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetic Medicine and Development, University of Geneva Medical School and University Hospitals of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Guipponi
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetic Medicine and Development, University of Geneva Medical School and University Hospitals of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Santoni
authors.affiliation: Office Médico-Pédagogique Research Unit, Department of Psychiatry, University of Geneva Medical School, Geneva, Switzerland.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Schneider
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetic Medicine and Development, University of Geneva Medical School and University Hospitals of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Gehrig
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetic Medicine and Development, University of Geneva Medical School and University Hospitals of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
authors.forename: X B
authors.initials: XB
authors.lastname: Bustillo
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, State University of New York at Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY, USA.
authors.forename: W R
authors.initials: WR
authors.lastname: Kates
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University, Bronx, NY, USA.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Morrow
authors.affiliation: Office Médico-Pédagogique Research Unit, Department of Psychiatry, University of Geneva Medical School, Geneva, Switzerland.|Child Neuropsychiatry Unit, Department of Neuroscience, I.R.C.C.S Children Hospital Bambino Gesù, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Armando
authors.affiliation: Child Neuropsychiatry Unit, Department of Neuroscience, I.R.C.C.S Children Hospital Bambino Gesù, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Vicari
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetic Medicine and Development, University of Geneva Medical School and University Hospitals of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Sloan-Béna
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetic Medicine and Development, University of Geneva Medical School and University Hospitals of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gagnebin
authors.affiliation: Division of Medical Genetics, Department of Pediatrics, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA.
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Shashi
authors.affiliation: Department of Allied Health, University of North Carolina School of Medecine, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
authors.forename: S R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Hooper
authors.affiliation: Office Médico-Pédagogique Research Unit, Department of Psychiatry, University of Geneva Medical School, Geneva, Switzerland.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Eliez
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetic Medicine and Development, University of Geneva Medical School and University Hospitals of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.|Institut of Genetics and Genomics in Geneva (iGE3), Geneva, Switzerland.
authors.forename: S E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Antonarakis
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002892:Chromosomes, Human, Pair 22 / Q000235:genetics*; D004062:DiGeorge Syndrome / Q000235:genetics* / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011110:Polymorphism, Genetic; D011618:Psychotic Disorders / Q000235:genetics* / Q000523:psychology; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D055815:Young Adult