S. Le Corre et al., Increased levels of expression of an NMDARI splice variant in the superiortemporal gyrus in schizophrenia, NEUROREPORT, 11(5), 2000, pp. 983-986
Expression patterns of mRNAs for the NMDAR1 subunit (NRI) carboxy-terminus
isoforms were investigated in postmortem brain tissue using isotopic in sit
u hybridization. Three brain regions (superior temporal, middle frontal and
visual cortices) were examined in patients with schizophrenia (n = 6) and
control subjects (n = 6). A 22% higher level of expression of the NRI isofo
rm that contains neither spliced exon was observed in the superior temporal
gyrus of patients with schizophrenia compared with controls (p=0.01). No d
ifferences were observed in the expression of the other isoforms in the thr
ee regions studied. These data suggest that NRI alternative splicing might
be abnormal in schizophrenia and reinforce previous findings implicating th
e superior temporal gyrus as a site of neural dysfunction in schizophrenia.
NeuroReport 11:983-986 (C) 2000 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.