and Missense Variants Implicate Defective Neurotransmission in Early-onset Inherited Schizophrenias

Background: Schizophrenia is characterized by hallucinations, delusions and disorganized behaviour. Recessive or X-linked transmissions are rarely described for common psychiatric disorders. We examined the genetics of psychosis to identify rare large-effect variants in patients with extreme schizophrenia.

Methods: We recruited 2 consanguineous families, each with patients affected by early-onset, severe, treatment-resistant schizophrenia. We performed exome sequencing for all participants. We checked variant rarity in public databases and with ethnically matched controls. We performed in silico analyses to assess the effects of the variants on proteins.

Results: Structured clinical evaluations supported diagnoses of schizophrenia in all patients and phenotypic absence in the unaffected individuals. Data analyses identified multiple variants. Only 1 variant per family was predicted as pathogenic by prediction tools. A homozygous c.649C > T:p.(Arg217Cys) variant in and a hemizygous c.700A > G:p.(Thr234Ala) variant in affected evolutionary conserved amino acid residues and were the most likely causes of phenotype in the patients of each family. Variants were ultra-rare in publicly available databases and absent from the DNA of 400 ethnically matched controls. is implicated in modulating sensory behaviour in . Variants of are known to cause nonsyndromic X-linked intellectual disability with or without human behavioural dysfunction.

Limitations: Each variant is unique to a particular family's patients, and findings may not be replicated.

Conclusion: Our work suggests that some rare variants may be involved in causing inherited psychosis or schizophrenia. Variant-specific functional studies will elucidate the pathophysiology relevant to schizophrenias and motivate translation to personalized therapeutics.