Association of DRD2 gene variant with schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a complex multifactorial disorder for which the pathobiology still remains elusive. Dysfunction of the dopamine D2 receptor signaling has been associated with the illness, but numerous studies provide confounding results. This study investigates the association of synonymous polymorphisms (His313 and Pro319) in the dopamine D2 receptor gene with schizophrenia using a case–control approach, with 101 cases and 145 controls. Our results demonstrated that genotype distribution for the His313 polymorphism was significantly different between schizophrenia patients and control subjects (p = 0.0012), while the Pro319 polymorphism did not show any association with the disease. The results suggest that the synonymous SNP His313 in DRD2 may be associated with the illness. However, there is a need for further replication studies with larger sample sets.