POSTER NO: 358

Family-based association studies of schizophrenia with serotonin transporter gene in Han Chinese

²Weiwei Sun, ⁴Jinbo Fan, ⁴Junxia Tang, ³Niufan Gu, ³Guoyin Feng, ¹Lin He
¹Bio-X Life Science Research Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, ²College of Life Science, Shandong University, China, ³Shanghai Institute of Mental Health, Shanghai, China, ⁴Shanghai Research Center of Life Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.

The serotonin transporter gene (5-HTT), which plays a key role in the serotonergic pathway in the brain, is a candidate for mediating genetic susceptibility to various psychiatric disorders. Two polymorphic sites in this gene including a VNTR in the second intron and an insertion/deletion in the promoter region (5-HTTLPR) had been identified and reported to be associated with schizophrenia, but the follow-up studies showed conflicting results. To further assess the involvement of 5-HTT in the etiology of schizophrenia, we examed two polymorphisms (intronic VNTR and 5-HTTLPR) with a cohort of samples (332 well-diagnosed schizophrenic parent-offspring trios collected from Shanghai, Xi'an and Jilin areas) using the transmission disequilibrium test (TDT). Unfortunately no preferential transmission of any allele or haplotype was detected from both polymorphisms examed. Our results suggest that the serotonin transporter gene is unlikely to have a major contribution to susceptibility to schizophrenia in Han Chinese population.