Genome-wide association studies of smooth pursuit and antisaccade eye movements in psychotic disorders: findings from the B-SNIP study.

Transl Psychiatry
Authors
Keywords
Abstract

Eye movement deviations, particularly deficits of initial sensorimotor processing and sustained pursuit maintenance, and antisaccade inhibition errors, are established intermediate phenotypes for psychotic disorders. We here studied eye movement measures of 849 participants from the Bipolar-Schizophrenia Network on Intermediate Phenotypes (B-SNIP) study (schizophrenia N=230, schizoaffective disorder N=155, psychotic bipolar disorder N=206 and healthy controls N=258) as quantitative phenotypes in relation to genetic data, while controlling for genetically derived ancestry measures, age and sex. A mixed-modeling genome-wide association studies approach was used including ~4.4 million genotypes (PsychChip and 1000 Genomes imputation). Across participants, sensorimotor processing at pursuit initiation was significantly associated with a single nucleotide polymorphism in IPO8 (12p11.21, P=8 × 10), whereas suggestive associations with sustained pursuit maintenance were identified with SNPs in SH3GL2 (9p22.2, P=3 × 10). In participants of predominantly African ancestry, sensorimotor processing was also significantly associated with SNPs in PCDH12 (5q31.3, P=1.6 × 10), and suggestive associations were observed with NRSN1 (6p22.3, P=5.4 × 10) and LMO7 (13q22.2, P=7.3x10), whereas antisaccade error rate was significantly associated with a non-coding region at chromosome 7 (P=6.5 × 10). Exploratory pathway analyses revealed associations with nervous system development and function for 40 top genes with sensorimotor processing and pursuit maintenance (P=4.9 × 10-9.8 × 10). Our findings suggest novel patterns of genetic variation relevant for brain systems subserving eye movement control known to be impaired in psychotic disorders. They include genes involved in nuclear trafficking and gene silencing (IPO8), fast axonal guidance and synaptic specificity (PCDH12), transduction of nerve signals (NRSN1), retinal degeneration (LMO7), synaptic glutamate release (SH3GL2), and broader nervous system development and function.

Year of Publication
2017
Journal
Transl Psychiatry
Volume
7
Issue
10
Pages
e1249
Date Published
2017 10 24
ISSN
2158-3188
DOI
10.1038/tp.2017.210
PubMed ID
29064472
PubMed Central ID
PMC5682604
Links
Grant list
K08 MH083888 / MH / NIMH NIH HHS / United States
UL1 TR001863 / TR / NCATS NIH HHS / United States
R01 MH077862 / MH / NIMH NIH HHS / United States
R01 MH085485 / MH / NIMH NIH HHS / United States
R01 MH077851 / MH / NIMH NIH HHS / United States
R01 MH078113 / MH / NIMH NIH HHS / United States
R01 MH077945 / MH / NIMH NIH HHS / United States
R01 MH077852 / MH / NIMH NIH HHS / United States