Research
Glucocerebrosidase L444P mutation confers genetic risk for Parkinson’s disease in central China
- † Equal contributors
1 Department of Neurology, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Hubei, 430022, China
2 Department of Neurology, Qingdao Chengyang People’s Hospital, Shandong, 266109, China
3 Department of Neurology, Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430060, China
4 Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Harvard, USA
5 Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse, and Mailman Neuroscience Research Center, McLean Hospital, Belmont, MA, 02478, USA
6 Harvard NeuroDiscovery Center, Boston, MA, 02114, USA
Behavioral and Brain Functions 2012, 8:57 doi:10.1186/1744-9081-8-57
Published: 10 December 2012Abstract
Background
Mutations of the glucocerebrosidase (GBA) gene have reportedly been associated with Parkinson disease (PD) in various ethnic populations such as Singaporean, Japanese, Formosan, Canadian, American, Portuguese, Greek, Brazilian, British, Italian, Ashkenazi Jewish, southern and southwestern Chinese. The purpose of this study is to determine in central China whether or not the reported GBA mutations remain associated with PD.
Methods
In this project, we conducted a controlled study in a cohort of 208 central Chinese PD patients and 298 controls for three known GBA mutations (L444P, N370S and R120W).
Results
Our data reveals a significantly higher frequency of L444P mutation in GBA gene of PD cases (3.4%) compared with the controls (0.3%) (P = 0.007, OR = 10.34, 95% CI = 1.26 - 84.71). Specifically, the frequency of L444P mutation was higher in the late onset PD (LOPD) cases compared with that in control subjects. The N370S and R120W mutations were detected in neither the PD group nor the control subjects.
Conclusions
Our observations demonstrated that the GBA L444P mutation confers genetic risk for PD, especially LOPD, among the population in the central China area.
