The human frizzled-3 (FZD3) gene on chromosome 8p21, a receptor gene for Wnt ligands, is associated with the susceptibility to schizophrenia.
Katsu T,
Ujike H,
Nakano T,
Tanaka Y,
Nomura A,
Nakata K,
Takaki M,
Sakai A,
Uchida N,
Imamura T,
Kuroda S.
Department of Neuropsychiatry, Okayama University Graduate School of Medicine and Dentistry, 2-5-1 Shikata-cho, Okayama 700-8558, Japan.
Neurodevelopmental abnormalities have been reported in studies on the pathogenesis of schizophrenia. The Wnt-signaling pathway has been implicated in a variety of processes in neurodevelopment, and the frizzled proteins have been identified as receptors for Wnt ligands. Of the frizzled proteins, frizzled-3 (FZD3) is required for formation of the neural crest and for development of major fiber tracts in the CNS. The human FZD3 gene is located on chromosome 8p21, a positive linkage locus for schizophrenia. We analyzed polymorphisms of the FZD3 gene in patients with schizophrenia and control subjects in the Japanese population. We found a significant association between schizophrenia and the FZD3 gene in single nucleotide polymorphisms and haplotype analyses. Our data suggest that dysregulation of the Wnt-signaling pathway may be involved in the susceptibility to schizophrenia.
PMID: 14642436 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]