Association of a Novel KIF26B Gene Polymorphism with Susceptibility to Schizophrenia and Breast Cancer: A Case-Control Study

Background: KIF26B gene is found to play essential roles in regulating different aspects of cell proliferation and development of the nervous system. We aimed to determine if rs12407427 T/C polymorphism could af-fect susceptibility to schizophrenia (SZN) and breast cancer (BC), the two genetically correlated diseases. Methods: The current case-control study was performed from Aug 2018 to Dec 2018. Briefly, 159 female pathologically confirmed BC cases referring to Alzahra Hospital, Isfahan, Iran, and 102 psychologically con-firmed SZN patients (60 males and 42 females) admitted to Baharan Hospital, Zahedan, Iran, were enrolled. Using the salting-out method, genomic DNA was extracted, and variants were genotyped using allele-specific amplification refractory mutation system polymerase chain reaction (ARMS-PCR) method. Results: The results revealed a significant association between the KIF26B rs12407427 codominant CT (P=0.001), CC (P=0.0001), dominant CT+CC, and recessive CC (P=0.001) genotypes with the risk of develop-ing SZN. Significant correlations were also found regarding rs12407427 and BC susceptibility in different inheritance models, including over-dominant CT (P=0.026), dominant CT+CC (P=0.001), recessive CC (P=0.009), and codominant CT and CC (P=0.001) genotypes. The over-presence of the C allele was also cor-related with an increased risk for SZN (P=0.0001) and BC (P=0.0001). Finally, computational analysis pre-dicted that T/C variation in this polymorphism could change the binding sites in proteins involved in splic-ing. Conclusion: rs12407427 T/C as a de novo KIF26B variant might be a novel genetic biomarker for SZN and/or BC susceptibility in a sample of the Iranian population.