No association was found between a functional SNP in ZDHHC8 and schizophrenia in a Japanese case-control population

ZDHHC8 is a new and attractive candidate for a schizophrenia-susceptibility factor. First, several lines of linkage studies showed that 22q11, on which ZDHHC8 is located, is a “hot” region. Second, fine linkage disequilibrium mapping revealed a significant association around ZDHHC8. Moreover, a very recent study reported that one single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP: rs175174) in ZDHHC8 might affect the splicing process, the ZDHHC8 knock-out mice showed the gender-specific phenotype, and the transmission disequilibrium test (TDT) using this SNP also showed significant association with human female schizophrenia. Thus, we attempted a replication study of this SNP using relatively large Japanese case-control samples (561 schizophrenics and 529 controls). No association was found between schizophrenia and controls even after dividing samples by gender. Because our sample size provided quite high power, ZDHHC8 may not play a major role in Japanese schizophrenia. And our results did not support the gender-specific effect of this SNP.