An association study of the neuregulin 1 gene, bipolar affective disorder and psychosis

Abstract

This study supports the hypothesis that NRG1 may play a role in the development of bipolar disorder, especially in psychotic subtypes, albeit with different alleles to previous association reports in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Matrix Metalloproteinase-9 Gene and Bipolar Mood Disorder

“…Although most genes implicated in both disorders have the same risk variants, it should be noted that also in recent study of Prata et al (2009) on the polymorphism of neuregulin 1 (NRG1) gene, the association for bipolar illness was found with different allele of SNP8NGR221533 polymorphism than with that previously observed in schizophrenia. Furthermore, our association with different alleles of MMP-9 gene polymorphism in bipolar illness in schizophrenia may be compatible with a relationship of these disorders with cancer and heart disease as judged from studies of this MMP-9 polymorphism in these somatic conditions (e.g., higher risk of cancer in bipolar illness, and lower in schizophrenia).…”

The Physiology, Signaling, and Pharmacology of Dopamine Receptors

“…Furthermore, a reduction in Akt protein levels has been observed in the hippocampus and frontal cortex in postmortem brain samples and lymphocytes from patients with schizophrenia compared with healthy control subjects (Emamian et al, 2004). In addition, Disrupted-InSchizophrenia 1 (DISC1) and Neuregulin 1 (NRG1), the genetic variants that have been shown to contribute to the pathogenesis of schizophrenia (Ross et al, 2006), have been shown to affect the Akt/GSK-3 signaling pathway in various experimental models (Mao et al, 2009;Prata et al, 2009;Kéri et al, 2010Kéri et al, , 2011Sei et al, 2010;Lipina et al, 2011), indicating that complex interactions exist among the network of schizophrenia-related proteins (Beaulieu et al, 2009;Karam et al, 2010). Recent evidence has indicated that a decrease in Neuregulin 1-induced Akt phosphorylation is associated with an impaired sensory gating mechanism in first-episode patients with schizophrenia (Kim et al, 2009).…”

Contribution of nonprimate animal models in understanding the etiology of schizophrenia

“…260 Studies of various races have shown a significant association between schizophrenia, as well as psychotic features related to other disorders, and haplotypes of NRG1. [261][262][263] However, some studies have failed to find an association between mutations in NRG1 and schizophrenia. 264,265 A recent meta-analysis of 13 human association studies of NRG1 found that 6 polymorphisms in NRG1, as well as at-risk haplotypes, showed a strong and consistent positive association with schizophrenia.…”