Background: Adenylosuccinate synthase (ADSS) catalyzes the first committed step of AMP synthesis. It was suggested that the blood-derived RNA of ADSS was down-regulated in schizophrenia (SZ) and one of the eight putative biomarker genes to discriminate SZ from normal controls. However, it remains unclear whether the reduction of ADSS RNA is due to the polymorphisms of the gene or not.
Methods: We attempted to examine the association of ADSS gene with schizophrenia in a Chinese population of 480 schizophrenics and 502 normal controls. Genotyping was performed by the Sequenom platform.
Results: The 6 marker SNPs (rs3102460, rs3127459, rs3127460, rs3127465, rs3006001, and rs3003211) were genotyped. The frequencies of alleles, genotypes, and haplotypes were tested between cases and controls. There was no significant difference of genotypic, allelic, or haplotypic distributions of the 6 SNPs between the two groups.
Conclusion: Our data did not support ADSS gene as a susceptibility gene for SZ in Chinese Han population. Large sample size study is needed to validate or replicate our association study, especially from other ethnic populations.