Association study of a genetic variant in the long intergenic noncoding RNA (linc01080) with schizophrenia in Han Chinese

BACKGROUND: Schizophrenia is currently considered to be a polygene-related disease with unknown etiology. This research will verify whether the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) of the long intergenic noncoding RNA01080 (linc01080) contributes to the susceptibility and phenotypic heterogeneity of schizophrenia, with a view to providing data support for the prevention and individualized treatment of this disease. METHOD: The SNP rs7990916 in linc01080 were genotyped in 1139 schizophrenic and 1039 controls in a Southern Chinese Han population by the improved multiplex ligation detection reaction (imLDR) technique. Meanwhile, we assessed and analyzed the association between this SNP and schizophrenics’ clinical symptoms, and the cognitive function. RESULT: There was no significant difference in genotype distribution, allele frequency distribution, gender stratification analysis between the two groups. However, the SNP of rs7990916 was significantly associated with the age of onset in patients with schizophrenia (P = 8.22E-07), patients with T allele had earlier onset age compared with CC genotype carriers. In terms of cognitive function, patients with T allele scored lower than CC genotype carriers in the Tower of London score and symbol coding score in the Brief assessment of Cognition (BACS), and the difference was statistically significant (P = 0.014, P = 0.022, respectively). CONCLUSION: Our data show for the first time that linc01080 polymorphism may affect the age of onset and neurocognitive function in patients with schizophrenia.