Assessment of an Apo-1/Fas Promoter Polymorphism in Korean Schizophrenia Patients

Apoptosis has been hypothesized to be involved in the pathogenesis in schizophrenia. A large number of genes are known to mediate the apoptotic process; Apo-1/Fas (CD95) is a well-known example of such genes. In the present study, MvaI restriction fragment length polymorphism, a polymorphic marker present within the Apo-1/Fas gene, was examined in a population consisting of 226 control subjects and 110 schizophrenia patients, all of them Korean in ethnicity. No statistically significant difference in the genotypic distribution and allelic frequencies was observed between the control and the schizophrenia patient group. To find out the precise effect of Apo-1/Fas gene polymorphisms on the susceptibility to schizophrenia, further studies are warranted to investigate possible involvement of other polymorphisms with a larger sample population.

Personality Characteristics and Insight Acquisition in Schizophrenia / 신경정신의학

OBJECTIVES: We attempted to investigate personality characteristics influencing insight acquisition in patients with schizophrenia. METHODS: Tridimensional personality questionnaire(TFQ) for neurobiologically based personality characteristics assessment and Barron's ego strength test were administrated to 30 patients with schizophrenia who had good insight and 30 patients who had poor insight. Each group was also compared with 453 normal health controls. RESULTS: There were no significant differences between good and poor insight acquisition groups on ego strength. Poor insight acquisition group showed significantly higher reward dependence dimension on Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire than good insight acquisition group, though the other two personality dimensions showed no difference. The good insight group showed no difference on three TFQ dimensions from normal healthy control group. However, the poor insight group demonstrated higher score in reward dependence dimension than the healthy control group but not in the other two dimensions. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that neurobiologically determined personality characteristics rather than ego strength would be closely related with insight acquisition in schizophrenia. Reward dependence as groups of behavioral characteristics, mainly derived from central norepinephrine mediated behavior would be related with insight formation. The roles of norepinephrine in schizophrenia have not been lolly understood yet. Further understandings regarding insight formation process and role of norepinephrine In schizophrenia could give some clues on insight acquisition in patients with schizophrenia.