Association of SYNE1 locus with bipolar disorder in Chinese population

Objectives Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) suggest that rs9371601 in the SYNE1 gene is a risk SNP for bipolar disorder (BPD) in populations of European ancestry, but further replication analyses across distinct populations are needed. Methods We analyzed the association between rs9371601 and BPD in a Han Chinese sample of 1315 BPD cases and 1956 controls. Results We observed a significant association between rs9371601 and BPD in Han Chinese ( p = 0.0121, OR = 0.859). However, further examinations revealed that the Europeans and Chinese subjects had different BPD risk alleles at the locus. We then found that rs9371601 had different “minor alleles” and distinct linkage disequilibrium (LD) patterns surrounding itself in Europeans and Han Chinese, which might be the explanation of the observed inconsistent association signals for this locus in different populations. Our explorative analyses of the biological impact of rs9371601 suggested that this SNP was significantly associated with the methylation of a CpG site (cg01844274, p = 5.05⨯10 − 6 ) within SYNE1 in human dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) tissues. Conclusions Our data confirms the association between rs9371601 and BPD, but the underlying biological mechanism remains to be fully elucidated in further studies.