PPARD May Play a Protective Role against the Development of Schizophrenia

Xinrong Li; Sha Liu; Karan Kapoor; Yong Xu

doi:10.1155/2020/3480412

PPARD May Play a Protective Role against the Development of Schizophrenia

PPAR Res. 2020 Aug 7:2020:3480412. doi: 10.1155/2020/3480412. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Xinrong Li^{1

2}, Sha Liu^{1

2}, Karan Kapoor³, Yong Xu^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Shanxi Key Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence Assisted Diagnosis and Treatment for Mental Disorder, First Hospital of Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, China.
² Department of Psychiatry, First Hospital/First Clinical Medical College of Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, China.
³ NIH Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.

Abstract

PPARD has been suggested to contribute to the etiology of schizophrenia (SCZ) with the underlying mechanisms largely unknown. Here, we first collected and analyzed the PPARD expression profile from three groups: (1) 18 healthy control (HC) subjects, (2) 14 clinical high-risk (CHR) patients, and (3) 19 early onset of SCZ (EOS) patients. After that, we conducted a systematical pathway analysis to explore the potential mechanisms involved in PPARD exerting influence on the pathological development of SCZ. Compared to the HC group, the expression of PPARD was slightly decreased in the EOS group (LFC = -0.34; p = 0.23) and increased in the CHR group (LFC = 0.65; p = 0.20). However, there was a significant difference between the EOS group and the CHR group (LFC = -0.99; p = 0.015), reflecting the amount of variation in PPARD expression before and after the onset of SCZ. Pathway analysis suggested that overexpression of PPARD may regulate ten proteins or molecules to inhibit the pathological development of SCZ, including the deactivation of eight SCZ promoters and stimulation of two SCZ inhibitors. Our results support the association between PPARD and SCZ. The pathways identified may help in the understanding of the potential mechanisms by which PPARD contributes to the etiology of SCZ.