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Schizophrenia two‐hit hypothesis in velo‐cardio facial syndrome
Author(s) -
Williams Hywel J.,
Monks Stephen,
Murphy Kieran C.,
Kirov George,
O'Donovan Michael C.,
Owen Michael J.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
american journal of medical genetics part b: neuropsychiatric genetics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.393
H-Index - 126
eISSN - 1552-485X
pISSN - 1552-4841
DOI - 10.1002/ajmg.b.32129
Subject(s) - schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , copy number variation , psychosis , intellectual disability , genetics , psychiatry , psychology , gene , biology , genome
Deletion of chr22q11 gives rise to velo‐cardio facial syndrome (VCFS) and increases schizophrenia risk. The source of this elevated risk although unknown could result from stochastic, environmental, or genetic factors, the latter encompassing a range of complexity from polygenic mechanisms to “second‐hit” mutations. For this study we tested the two‐hit hypothesis where additional risk is conferred through a second CNV. We identified large (>100 kb) CNVs in 48 VCFS cases (23 with psychosis—25 without) and show in the psychotic VCFS group there is a significant ( P = 0.02) increase in the average size of CNVs (354–227 kb). To identify second‐hit loci we focused on individuals possessing gene‐centric CNVs and through literature mining identified 4 (31%) psychotic VCFS individuals (n = 13) that overlapped loci previously implicated in neuropsychiatric disorders compared to 1 (10%) from the non‐psychotic VCFS individuals (n = 10). For replication 17 VCFS patients with schizophrenia from the molecular genetics of schizophrenia dataset were used to identify further CNVs. Thirteen individuals possessing gene‐centric CNVs were identified including 3 (23%) individuals possessing a potential second‐hit, taking the overall total in the psychotic VCFS group (n = 26) to 7 (27%) potential second‐hit loci. Notably a deletion in a psychotic VCFS patient at 2q23.1 hit the gene MBD5 which when deleted gives rise to intellectual disability, epilepsy, and autistic features. Through this study we potentially extend this phenotypic spectrum to include schizophrenia. Our results suggest the two‐hit hypothesis may be relevant to a proportion of VCFS patients with psychosis but sample sizes are small and further studies warranted. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.