Background: Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) insufficiency has been reported to be related to the tardive dyskinesia (TD) susceptibility. Inada et al. (Pharmacogenet Genomics 2008;18:317-23) identified eight genes belonging to GABA receptor signaling pathway that may be involved in TD susceptibility by genome-wide screening and they replicated associations in an independent sample for polymorphisms in SLC6A11 (GABA transporter 3), GABRG3 (c-3 subunit of GABA-A receptor) and GABRB2 (β-2 subunit of GABA-A receptor). In this study, we tried to replicate their finding in a larger Korean sample and find if any of the genes was associated with the susceptibility to TD.
Methods: We selected three polymorphisms in SLC6A11 (rs4684742), GABRG3 (rs2061051) and GABRB2 (rs918528) from the previous study. We carried out a case-control study (105 TD and 175 non-TD schizophrenic patients) to identify the association between the three candidate polymorphisms and susceptibility to TD and their epistatic interactions by using the multifactor dimensionality reduction (MDR) algorithm.
Results: Among the three variants, SCL6A11 genotypes distribution showed a significant difference between the TD and non-TD patients (P = 0.049). However, GABRG3 and GABRB2 genotype distributions were not associated with TD (P = 0.268 and P = 0.976, respectively). Further, our analyses provided significant evidence for gene-gene interactions (SCL6A11, GABRG3 and GABRB2) in the development of TD. The odds ratio increased to 2.53 (CI = 1.515-4.217, P = 0.0003) when the genetic susceptibility to TD was analyzed with the three genes considered altogether through MDR approach.
Conclusion: These results suggest that GABA receptor signaling pathway was associated with the increased susceptibility to TD in Korean schizophrenic patients.