The Association of V427M Missense Mutation of the PRODH Gene with Schizophrenia in the Iranian Patients

PRODH is one of the genes that exists in 22q11.2 location and encodes the prolin oxidase enzyme (POX) in the mitochondrial inner membrane and is expressed in the liver, kidney and brain. The importance of the accompaniment of the PRODH gene’s polymorphisms and mutations in increasing the risk of getting afflicted with schizophrenia has been proven in previous Linkage and Association studies. Proline dehydrogenase enzyme (POX) accelerates the converting of prolin into glutamate. Decreased enzyme causes hyperprolinemia resulting in increased proline and decreased glutamate. The activity of NMDA and AMPA receptors decrease and low activation of these receptors cause negative symptoms of schizophrenia disorder. V427M mutation in PRODH has been proven to decrease pox enzyme activity and is associated with schizophrenia disorder. Objectives: In this project the rs2238731 variant in the PRODH gene was genotyped in 95 schizophrenic patients whose diseases are psychiatrically confirmed and also in 120 healthy people without any history of schizophrenia and bipolarity in their pedigree. For this purpose, their peripheral blood was taken. Methods: In this study, the PCR-RFLP approach has been adopted in order to identify this variant. The SPSS 24.0 software has been used in order to statistically analyze the association of mutant variants and normal variants among the two groups afflicted with the disease and non-afflicted with the disease. The goal of this study was to shed light over the accompaniment of the rs2238731 variant in the PRODH gene with the risk of getting afflicted with schizophrenia among the Iranian patients. Results: According to our result, there is no association between V427M missense mutation and schizophrenia disorder in Iranian patients. So the V427M missense mutation could not be regarded as co-related with increasing risk of schizophrenia in Iranian patients.