Natalia B. Torkhova

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is common among schizophrenia patients, and one of MetS’s causes may be an imbalance in nitric oxide regulation. In this study, we examined associations of three polymorphic variants of the nitric oxide synthase 1 adapter protein (NOS1AP) gene with MetS in schizophrenia. NOS1AP regulates neuronal nitric oxide synthase, which controls intracellular calcium levels and may influence insulin secretion. The aim of the investigation was to study polymorphic variants of the NOS1AP gene as possible markers of MetS in patients with schizophrenia. A total of 489 Caucasian patients with schizophrenia (ICD-10) from Siberia (Russia) were included in the study, and 131 (26.8%) patients had MetS (IDF classification, 2007). The participants were genotyped for three single-nucleotide polymorphisms in NOS1AP (rs12143842, rs10494366, and rs12029454). Logistic regression was used for association analysis. Single-nucleotide polymorphisms, sex, and age served as covariates; the dependent variable was the coded parameter of the presence/absence of MetS. Polymorphisms rs12143842 and rs10494366 showed a stable association even after Bonferroni’s correction for multiple comparisons (p = 0.005 and 0.002, respectively), indicating a statistically significant contribution of these polymorphic variants to the pathogenesis of MetS. Our results suggest that in patients with schizophrenia, NOS1AP may be involved in MetS pathophysiology.

Interpreting the clinical significance of small supernumerary marker chromosomes (sSMCs) in prenatal diagnosis is still an urgent problem in genetic counselling regarding the fate of a pregnancy. We present a case of prenatal diagnosis of mosaic sSMC(10) in a foetus with a normal phenotype. Comprehensive cytogenomic analyses by array-based comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH), sSMC microdissection with next-generation sequencing (NGS) of microdissected library, fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) with locus-specific and telomere-specific DNA probes and quantitative real-time PCR revealed that sSMC(10) had a ring structure and was derived from the pericentromeric region of chromosome 10 with involvement of the 10p11.21-p11.1 and 10q11.21-q11.23 at 1.243 Mb and 7.173 Mb in size, respectively. We observed a difference in the length of sSMC(10) between NGS data of the DNA library derived from a single copy of sSMC(10), and aCGH results that may indicate instability and structural mosaicism for ring chromosomes in foetal cells. The presence of a 9 Mb euchromatin region in the analysed sSMC(10) did not lead to clinical manifestations, and a healthy girl was born at term. We suggest that the ring structure of sSMCs could influence sSMC manifestations and should be taken into account in genetic counselling during prenatal diagnosis.