No association found between the promoter variants of ADRA1A and schizophrenia in the Chinese population

Schizophrenia is a chronic psychiatry disorder with a strong genetic component. A recent association study of α1A-adrenoceptor gene (ADRA1A) involving an isolated Spanish population, focusing on the promoter region of the ADRA1A, genotyped eight single SNPs at the promoter region of ADRA1A and found that two SNPs, −563G/A and −9625G/A, were associated with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorders. We were interested in the two positive sites reported and selected five variants among the promoter region of ADRA1A, namely −563G/A, −9625G/A, −2760C/A, −4155G/C and a new substitution we detected between −508bp and −530bp upstream of the translation initiation site. Our sample consisted of 480 schizophrenia and 480 control subjects. All recruits were Han Chinese in Shanghai origin. However, neither individual SNP nor any haplotype was associated with schizophrenia in our study. These results suggest that the variants among the promoter of ADRA1A gene are unlikely to play a major role in the susceptibility to schizophrenia in the Chinese population.