Association study of a functional serotonin transporter gene polymorphism with schizophrenia, psychopathology and clozapine response¹

Abstract 

Serotonin is implicated in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia. Following serotonin release, the serotonin transporter (5-HTT) is the major determinant of serotonin inactivation. The present study tested the hypothesis that a biallelic polymorphism in the 5′ regulatory region of the 5-HTT gene (5-HTTLPR) confers susceptibility to schizophrenia, association with the clinical manifestations of schizophrenia or clozapine response. 90 treatment-resistant schizophrenic patients were assessed using the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale before and after clozapine treatment. The results demonstrated that the 5-HTTLPR variants did not play a major role in the susceptibility, clinical manifestations or clozapine response in schizophrenia.

Keywords:  Association study, Clozapine, Genotype, Psychopathology, Schizophrenia, Serotonin transporter

• 1 The experiments in this study were performed at the Molecular Biology Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Veterans General Hospital Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan.