Microglial-expressed genetic risk variants, cognitive function and brain volume in patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls.

ABSTRACT: Changes in immune function are associated with variance in cognitive functioning in schizophrenia. Given that microglia are the primary innate immune cells in the brain, we examined whether schizophrenia risk-associated microglial genes (measured via polygenic score analysis) explained variation in cognition in patients with schizophrenia and controls (n = 1,238) and tested whether grey matter mediated this association. We further sought to replicate these associations in an independent sample of UK Biobank participants (n = 134,827). We then compared the strength of these microglial associations to that of neuronal and astroglial (i.e., other brain-expressed genes) polygenic scores, and used MAGMA to test for enrichment of these gene-sets with schizophrenia risk. Increased microglial schi

SUBMITTER: Corley E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8460789 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature