Abstract
Schizophrenia (SZ) is a psychiatric disease with plausible neurodevelopmental etiology. Although genetic studies show significant association of immune molecules loci such as major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I with SZ, it is not clear whether these immune molecules are involved in the pathology observed in SZ brains. MHC class I and the classical pathway components of complement system (C1q and C3) have been shown to regulate brain neuronal maturation and function. We have examined the expression of MHC class I and complement protein C3 in two frontal cortical regions of postmortem brains of SZ patients. Since cigarette smoking may modulate MHC class I protein expression and a higher rate of smoking is observed in SZ patients, we studied the expression of MHC class I and C3 in relation to the presence of smoking. We found that MHC class I protein expression is reduced in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) but not in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) of nonsmoker SZ patients. We did not observe SZ-associated changes in C3 mRNA expression. Our exploratory research suggests a potential involvement of MHC class I in SZ and implies that smoking might modulate its expression.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 289-293 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Journal | Neuroscience Research |
Volume | 71 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Nov 2011 |
Keywords
- Complement proteins
- Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC)
- Immune molecule
- MHC class I
- Orbitofrontal cortex (OFC)
- Schizophrenia (SZ)
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Neuroscience