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Objective: Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder characterized with heterogeneous symptoms. This feature of this disorder is the most important underlying reason of not finding a biomarker that can be used in the diagnosis of schizophrenia. Some of the features of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia may vary. So, the clinical features of the cases must be well defined in the studies searching biomarkers. The enzyme activation of mitochondrial complexes located in the electron transport chain has been identified as a potential biomarker for schizophrenia. In this study, the relationship between mitochondrial complex I-III gene mRNA levels and clinical features of the schizophrenia patients were investigated.
Method: 84 chronic schizophrenic and 54 first-episode schizophrenia patients in the psychiatric clinic of Gulhane Military Medical Academy were enrolled to the study. The clinical features of the patients such as duration of disease, age of onset of disease, duration of hospitalization, family history, history of suicide attempt, smoking habits and alcohol use were investigated. mRNA levels of mitochondrial complex I-III genes (NDUFV1, NDUFV2, NDUFS1, UQCR10) from peripheral blood samples of the patients were tested in the genetic laboratory. The relationship between the clinical features and gene mRNA levels of the patients were analyzed by Pearson’s correlation test.
Results: Positive correlation was detected between the mRNA levels of NDUFV1 gene and age of onset of the disease (r=0, 21; p=0, 04). In first-episode schizophrenia patients, there was a negative correlation between duration of the disease and NDUFV2 gene mRNA levels (r=-0, 33, p=0, 02). There was no correlation between other clinical features and mRNA levels of researched genes.
Conclusion: Today, schizophrenia diagnosis is still being put on the basis of clinical criteria. Biomarkers have been tried to be found to confirm the objectivity of the diagnosis. But it should be considered that schizophrenia cases might exhibit disparate clinical features. Disparate clinical features might alter the peripheral findings. Investigation of the peripheral parameters by the separation of schizophrenia cases into groups based on clinical features may increase the specificity of biological markers for schizophrenia.