Investigating the level of EGR1 gene expression in the peripheral blood of Iranian patients with paranoid personality disorder and its relationship with patients' neuromarkers, a brain imaging genetic study
Investigating the level of EGR1 gene expression in the peripheral blood of Iranian patients with paranoid personality disorder and its relationship with patients' neuromarkers, a brain imaging genetic study
Tannaz Rezaei Lori,1Rojina Aliabadian,2,*Abbasali Dehpouri,3Mahsa Hokm abadi,4Nastaran Einollahi Shams abad,5
1. Tehran medical science Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran 2. Tehran medical science Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran 3. Islamic Azad University, Qaimshahr branch 4. Tehran medical science Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran 5. Tehran medical science Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
Introduction: Currently, there are no definitive proven causes for personality disorders. But there are several possible causes and risk factors that vary by type of disorder, person, and circumstances, and genetic research to understand why personality disorders develop is severely lacking. The aim of this research was to investigate the level of EGR1 gene expression in the blood of patients with paranoid personality disorder and its relationship with the patients' neuromarkers. In this research, 100 patients with paranoid personality disorder and 100 healthy individuals were selected, and the Wechsler test was used to confirm the normal intelligence of the participants, and the EEG test was used to record the electrical activity of the brain, and brain imaging techniques were used.
After taking blood from people and transferring to the laboratory, RNA was extracted and Quantitative Real-Time PCR was performed. SPSS.20 was used for statistical analysis. The finding of the research was the correlation between the results of gene expression and the frequency of brain waves of patients with paranoid personality disorder, statistical correlations between the frequency of brain waves and the results of gene expression in patients with paranoid personality disorder. The results of ERG1 evaluation showed a significant and direct relationship between the decrease in beta wave frequency and the decrease in gene expression. The results of relative average gene expression calculated by Livak method for patients with paranoid personality disorder show a decrease in EGR1 gene expression in the group of patients compared to healthy individuals.
Methods: In the current research, the writer was faced with quantitative and qualitative data (two-mode and multi-mode) and the following statistical tests were used to analyze the data in SPSS.20 software in the following order:
1) Checking the normal distribution of data with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test.
2) Examining the difference in gene expression between healthy and diseased groups with the mean test of two independent samples.
3) Investigating the correlation of genetic and psychological data with Pearson's correlation test.
In this research, patients with paranoid personality disorder among the clients of psychiatric clinics were included in the study after being diagnosed by a psychiatrist based on the diagnostic criteria of the DSM5 book, healthy people were included in the study after a visit by a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist and confirmation of mental health. After selecting the samples of sick people and healthy people with the same physical conditions (including the same age, gender, level of education and social class), people who had one or more criteria of the research output criteria were excluded from the research.
Patients were selected from psychiatric clinics in Tehran, Alborz and Isfahan provinces. Finally, 100 healthy samples and 100 patients with paranoid personality disorder were selected and included in the study. After explaining the steps and objectives of the research to the participants, written consent was obtained from them before the beginning of the research. The output criteria of this research are as follows:
1) Healthy and sick samples should not have a history of drug or stimulant abuse or high alcohol consumption at any stage of life.
2) Healthy and sick samples should not have mental retardation. The natural intelligence of people was confirmed by evaluating the Wechsler intelligence test.
3) Healthy samples must have general mental health, which was confirmed by conducting an unstructured psychiatric interview by a psychiatrist.
4) In order to minimize the effect of intervening variables, the selected sick and healthy samples must be free of any other physical or mental illness.
5) In case of a certain important emotional or physical incident up to four months before the sampling, due to the potential effect on the gene expression level, the person in question was removed from the research.
Results: This was despite the fact that there was no significant difference in the expression of this gene in people living in three different cities that were investigated (p>0.05). Also, based on the frequency of brain waves obtained by the EEG method in patients with paranoid personality disorder, it was found that there is a significant relationship between the decrease in beta wave frequency and the decrease in EGR1 gene expression. Matsumoto et al. (2012) observed in their study that social separation stress leads to a decrease in EGR1 expression in mice. This decrease in expression was observed in the nucleus of neurons in the cortical part of the brain. The stress applied to these mice had no effect on the expression of EGR1 in the striatum or the expression of other EGR family members. The result of the present research showed that EGR1 gene expression was decreased in people with paranoid personality disorder compared to healthy people.
Conclusion: The present research has investigated the expression of EGR1 gene in patients with this little-known disease with the aim of finding potential biomarkers in paranoid disorder. Such research can help to better understand the mechanisms involved in the occurrence of these diseases. In this study, 100 people with paranoid personality disorder and 100 healthy people were examined as a control group. The obtained results showed that the expression of EGR1 gene in people with paranoid personality disorder has decreased compared to healthy people. By comparing the level of EGR1 gene expression in two groups of healthy and paranoid personality disorder, a statistically significant difference was observed (p=0.001).