Support for involvement of the AHI1 locus in schizophrenia

Recently, markers in the Abelson Helper Integration Site 1 (AHI1) region were shown to be associated with schizophrenia in a family sample of Israeli-Arabs. Here, we report a study evaluating the relevance of the AHI1 region to schizophrenia in an Icelandic sample. Seven markers shown to confer risk in the previous report were typed in 608 patients diagnosed with broad schizophrenia and 1504 controls. Odds ratios for the overtransmitted alleles in the Israeli-Arab families ranged from 1.15 to 1.29 in the Icelandic sample. After Bonferroni correction for the seven markers tested, two markers were significantly associated with schizophrenia. Thus, our results are in general agreement with the previous report, with the strongest association signal observed in a region upstream of the AHI1 gene.