Novel biomarkers for schizophrenia in Malaysian population

  • Dr Loh Han Chern, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia

Biomarkers for Schizophrenia (SCZ) are essential to facilitate disease diagnosis; ideally at early stages, monitor disease progression and assess response to existing and future treatments. Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE) and matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight/time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-ToF/ToF MS) were used to perform proteome analysis of 40 schizophrenia samples and 40 healthy controls. Four protein spots were found to be altered in patients compared to controls. Among these acute phase proteins, apolipoprotein H (ApoH, p = 0.00346) showed significant overexpression in patients whilst apolipoprotein A-I (p = 0.00365), apolipoprotein J (p = 0.00313) and haptoglobin (p = 0.00307) were found down-regulated in patients compared to controls. To validate the result, western blotting with anti-ApoH to control and patient serums (n = 8) which were randomly selected from the tested group was carried out. As expected, a single specific band of molecular weight approximately 38 kDa was detected in membrane probed with anti-ApoH antibody in sera tested. In comparison, the expression level of ApoH in patient's serum is significantly higher than normal control group (p < 0.0298). In order to double confirm the differential expression of ApoH, the same experiment was repeated with the pooled sera of normal and patient group. A similar trend of results was obtained where patient group significantly showed the higher expression level of Apo H protein compared with the control group (p < 0.0306).These findings suggest that increased level of ApoH might be associated with the pathology of SCZ.