No abstract

This first short-term treatment study on NMDA receptor-enhancing agents suggests that sarcosine, superior to D-serine, can benefit not only patients with long-term stable disease but also acutely ill persons with schizophrenia. This finding indicates that a glycine transporter 1 inhibitor may be more efficacious than NMDA-glycine site agonists for adjuvant treatment of schizophrenia, at least during the acute phase. Further studies are needed.

We report the first genome-wide association study in 1000 bipolar I patients and 1000 controls, with a replication of the top hits in another 409 cases and 1000 controls in the Han Chinese population. Four regions with most strongly associated single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were detected, of which three were not found in previous GWA studies in the Caucasian populations. Among them, SNPs close to specificity protein 8 (SP8) and ST8 a-Nacetyl-neuraminide a-2,8-sialyltransferase (ST8SIA2) are associated with Bipolar I, with Pvalues of 4.87 Â 10 À7 (rs2709736) and 6.05 Â 10 À6 (rs8040009), respectively. We have also identified SNPs in potassium channel tetramerization domain containing 12 gene (KCTD12) (rs2073831, P = 9.74 Â 10 À6 ) and in CACNB2 (Calcium channel, voltage-dependent, b-2 subunit) gene (rs11013860, P = 5.15 Â 10 À5 ), One SNP nearby the rs1938526 SNP of ANK3 gene and another SNP nearby the SNP rs11720452 in chromosome 3 reported in previous GWA studies also showed suggestive association in this study (P = 6.55 Â 10 À5 and P = 1.48 Â 10 À5 , respectively). This may suggest that there are common and population-specific susceptibility genes for bipolar I disorder.