Analysis of the role of human leukocyte antigen class-I genes to understand the etiopathology of schizophrenia

BACKGROUND: Schizophrenia is the paradigmatic illness of psychiatry. The involvement of immunological and immunopathological mechanisms in the etiopathogenesis of schizophrenia has been a matter of research, with recently increasing effort. AIMS: In this study, we investigated the incidence of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) Class I antigens to understand the role of HLA genes in schizophrenia. MATERIALS AND METHODS: India born schizophrenic patients in and around Siliguri who attended outpatient department (OPD) of Department of Psychiatry, North Bengal Medical College and Hospital were considered for the present study. After the longitudinal follow up, 50 patients were enrolled for the study. The same number of age, sex and ethnically matched healthy subjects were considered as control. Low resolution polymerase chain reaction-sequence specific primer method was applied for typing the HLA antigens. STATISTICS: The phenotype frequencies were calculated by direct count. χ(2) test was done to compare the frequency of each antigen among the patients and control group and it was followed by Fisher's exact test. Relative risk was estimated by using Haldane's method. RESULTS: The result showed that some of the HLA antigens are associated with the schizophrenia and significant increase were observed for HLA A*03 antigen along with the significant decrease for HLA A*25, A*31 and HLA B*51. CONCLUSIONS: The study provides the evidence for the possible existence of susceptibility locus for schizophrenia within the HLA region. This preliminary observation may help to understand the etiological basis of this disorder and the study may further strengthen the HLA antigens as the marker for schizophrenia.