Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 11|pp 10290—10299

Interactive effect of MTHFR C677T polymorphism and sex on symptoms and cognitive functions in Chinese patients with chronic schizophrenia

Jie Gao¹, Mei Hong Xiu², Dian Ying Liu³, Chang Wei Wei⁴, Xiangyang Zhang⁵

¹Department of Cardiac Surgery, Beijing Chao-yang Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
²Beijing HuiLongGuan Hospital, Peking University HuiLongGuan Clinical Medical School, Beijing, China
³Department of Psychiatry, The Third People’s Hospital of Ganzhou, Ganzhou, Jiangxi, China
⁴Department of Anesthesiology, Beijing Chao-Yang Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
⁵CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

* Equal contribution

Received: February 3, 2020Accepted: April 20, 2020Published: June 4, 2020

Copyright © 2020 Gao et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

The etiology of schizophrenia is still unknown, and the MTHFR gene has been shown to be associated with SCZ. Previous studies have shown that patients with schizophrenia exhibit sex differences in symptoms and cognitive function. However, no study has been conducted to investigate the sex difference in the association between C677T polymorphism and symptoms and cognitive impairment in Chinese patients with schizophrenia. The C677T polymorphism was genotyped in 957 patients with schizophrenia and 576 controls. Patients were also rated on the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS). The results showed that there were significant differences in MTHFR C677T genotype and allele distributions between male patients and male controls (both p<0.05), while there was no significant difference between female patients and female controls (both p>0.05). Further analysis showed that there were significant sex differences in the association between C677T genotype and negative symptoms, immediate memory or attention index score in schizophrenia (p<0.05). This study suggests that the complex interactive effect between MTHFR C677T polymorphism and sex plays an important role in some clinical characteristics of patients with schizophrenia.