While cytokines and their genetic variants have been intensively studied in schizophrenia, little attention has been focused on chemokines in the last years. The monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (MCP-1) is known to attract peripheral monocytes to the brain during an inflammatory reaction and to affect the T helper (Th) cell development by stimulating Th2 polarization. Owing to the neuroinflammation in schizophrenia and the variable level of MCP-1 in these patients' sera, we proposed to analyze the impact of functional genetic variants of the MCP-1 gene (MCP-1-2518A/G (rs1024611), MCP-1-362G/C (rs2857656), and MCP-1 int1del554-567 (rs3917887)) in schizophrenic patients. We conducted a case-control study on a Tunisian population composed of 200 patients and 200 controls using RFLP-PCR. Our results indicated that the minor alleles (-2518G and Del554-567) were significantly more prevalent in controls than in patients (P=0.001/adjusted OR = 0.42, P=0.04/adjusted OR = 0.64), whereas, for -362C minor allele, increased risk of schizophrenia was revealed (P=0.001, adjusted OR = 2.38). In conclusion, we have identified the haplotype combination -2581G/-362G/int1del554-567 that could mediate protection against schizophrenia (P=0.0038, OR = 0.19) and the effect could result more strongly from the MCP-1 -2582G with -362G variants, whereas the effect of int1del554-567 may in part be explained by its LD with -362.
Copyright © 2019 Hana Saoud et al.