Background and objective Schizophrenia is a chronic mental illness that is associated with multifactorial causation, but the greatest risk factor is a positive family history. Previous studies have suggested that proinflammatory cytokines and acute-phase proteins increase and modulate the severity of symptoms of schizophrenia. The inflammatory milieu in these patients has been found to be controlled by the transcription factor nuclear factor-kappa B1 (NF-κB1) in the inflammatory cells. In this study, we aimed to examine the correlation between polymorphism of the NF-κB1 gene and the severity of disease symptoms in schizophrenia patients. Materials and methods This was a case-control study conducted on 90 diagnosed cases of schizophrenia patients with 90 matched healthy volunteers as controls. DNA was extracted from EDTA blood samples and PCR was run, and the study of the NF-κB1 gene polymorphism rs28362691 (-94 ATTG ins/del) was performed by using restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP). Results We observed the ins/ins genotype (78%) to be more prevalent among the study population. The del/del and ins/del genotypes were seen in 6.7% and 14.4% of schizophrenic patients respectively. The insertion allele was seen more than the deletion allele. Pearson's correlation analysis showed a significant positive correlation between NF-κB1 levels and disease severity with an r-value of 0.471 and a p-value of 0.027. Conclusion We found that in schizophrenia patients, the insertion allele was higher than the deletion allele and the ins/ins genotype was higher in frequency than the del/del and ins/del genotypes. There was a strong positive association between the insertion genotype and the severity of disease symptoms in schizophrenia patients.
Keywords: genotype; inflammation; mental health; nf-κb gene polymorphism; schizophrenia.
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