The Impact of Heat Shock Protein 70 Gene Variations on Clinical Presentation and Outcome in Schizophrenic Inpatients

We previously investigated a group of single-nucleotide polymorphisms of a set of genes coding for heat shock proteins (HSPA1A, HSPA1B and HSPA1L) and found a significant association between one HSPA1B variation and schizophrenia (SZ). We now report an association between a set of variations (rs2227956, rs2075799, rs1043618, rs562047 and rs539689) within the same genes and a larger sample of schizophrenic inpatients. A single variation, rs539689 (HSPA1B), was found to be marginally associated with Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) positive scores at discharge, and haplotype analysis revealed a significant association between improvement in PANSS scores with both A-C-G-G and A-C-G-G haplotypes. These findings further support a role of heat shock proteins in the pathophysiology of SZ. Copyright (C) 2009 S. Karger AG, Basel