Association of NrCAM Protein in an Iranian Sample of Patients with Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia (SZ) is a chronic multi genetic and multifactorial neurodevelopment disorder. Neural cell adhesion molecule (NrCAM) gene, which was assessed in this investigation, has significant functions in the generation of neural cells. NrCAM interferes in synapse generation, axon guidance, proliferation, myelination and differentiation [1]. NrCAM mRNA differentially expresses while cortical neuron growth (GEO accession number GSE102350). Also, it has been proven that, malfunctions in the structure of neocortical cells associated with schizophrenia [2]. NrCAM involves in many signaling pathways and has been identified as an SZ biomarker in many studies [3, 4].

This investigation intended to find significant changes in NrCAM protein expression in blood serum of SZ patients. Another purpose of this investigation is to evaluate the association of variant rs10235968 with NrCAM protein expression in patients' serum.

In this study, 52 paranoid patients, and 33 healthy persons were selected. To evaluate protein expression, ELIZA method was used. variant data of our previous study were used in this study (5). All data were interpreted using the unpaired t-test, ANOVA, and Chi-Square test using GraphPad Prism8.4.3.

NrCAM protein expression in blood serum has shown a significant difference between patients and healthy group (P = 0.0509). The association of variant rs10235968 and NrCAM protein expression has not detected (P = 0.9468). In our research, for the first time, NrCAM expression was assessed as an SZ candidate biomarker in blood serum of Iranian patients.