Meta-analysis of sex differences.pdf (459.24 kB)
Meta-analysis of sex differences in gene expression in schizophrenia.
journal contribution
posted on 2016-05-11, 00:00 authored by W Qin, C Liu, M Sodhi, H LuSchizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder which influences around 1 % of the worldwide population. Differences between male and female patients with schizophrenia have been noted. There is an earlier age of onset in males compared with females with this diagnosis, and in addition, there are differences in symptom profiles between the sexes. The underlying molecular mechanism of sex difference remains unclear. Here we present a comprehensive analysis to reveal the sex differences in gene expression in schizophrenia with stringent statistics criteria. We compiled a data set consisting of 89 male controls, 90 male schizophrenia patients, 35 female controls and 32 female schizophrenia patients from six independent studies of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in postmortem brain. When we tested for a sex by diagnosis interaction on gene expression, 23 genes were up-regulated and 23 genes were down-regulated in the male group (q-value < 0.05), several genes are related to energy metabolism, while 4 genes are located on sex chromosome. No genes were statistically significant in the female group when multiple testing correction were conducted (q-value <0.05), most likely due to the small sample size. Our protocol and results from the male group provide a starting point for identifying the underlying different mechanism between male and female schizophrenia patients.
Funding
This work was partially supported by the Hans W. Vahlteich Fund (MS), and UIC Department of Bioengineering (WQ, CL, HL). Publication fee are paid by Department of Bioengineering at UIC and by Shanghai Jiaotong University.
History
Publisher Statement
This is a copy of an article published in BMC Systems Biology © 2016 BioMed Central Publications.© 2016 Qin et al.Publisher
BioMed Centralissn
1752-0509Issue date
2016-01-11Usage metrics
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