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American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics) 74:475–479 (1997)

Genetic Association Between Monoamine Oxidase


and Manic-Depressive Illness: Comparison of Relative
Risk and Haplotype Relative Risk Data
Abbas Parsian1* and Richard D. Todd1,2
1
Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri
2
Department of Genetics, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri

There have been several conflicting reports INTRODUCTION


of association of monoamine oxidase (MAO)
A gene polymorphisms and bipolar affective Association studies of complex disorders with biologi-
disorder. In order to determine the possible cal and genetic markers are increasingly popular due
role of the MAO region in susceptibility to to the relative low cost and lack of need of specification
affective disorders in an independent of transmission models. Unfortunately, traditional
sample, we have genotyped 83 probands of case-control studies have several potential shortcom-
bipolar affective disorder families, 56 sets of ings including the generation of false positive results
parents of bipolar probands, and 84 normal due to undetected population stratification. An alter-
controls for intronic simple sequence repeat native approach to the case-control (relative risk) de-
polymorphisms of the MAO-A and MAO-B sign for genetic studies is the haplotype relative risk
genes. For MAO-A there were no significant method. Falk and Rubinstein (1987) proposed the con-
differences in allele frequencies between bi- struction of a contrast or control group from the non-
polar and normal control groups for both transmitted parental alleles of matings resulting in an
genders. However, for MAO-B there were affected proband. This method has the advantage that
significant differences between groups for both control and disease alleles are sampled from the
both genders. In contrast, allele-wise haplo- same gene pool. A disadvantage of this approach is the
type relative risk analysis for the 56 bipolar requirement of sampling both parents for each proband
proband-parent trios found no significant which could be problematic for disorders with late age
differences between transmitted and non- of onset or high mortality among relatives. In the pre-
transmitted allele frequencies for MAO-A or sent study we apply both of these methods to the study
B. These data do not support the association of bipolar affective disorder and the monoamine oxi-
of MAO-A or B with bipolar affective disor- dase (MAO) region of the X-chromosome.
der but do demonstrate that undetected The MAO-A and B genes, located on the short arm of
population stratification can be an impor- chromosome X (Xp11.23–p11.4), have been of interest
tant source of bias in case-control studies. as candidate genes for several disorders due to the
Am. J. Med. Genet. 74:475–479, 1997. function of the oxidases in terminating neurotransmit-
© 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc. ter action. In 1972 Murphy and Wyatt reported that
platelet MAO activity in chronic schizophrenics is
KEY WORDS: manic depression; mono- lower than in controls. Subsequently, Wyatt et al.
amine oxidases; relative risk; (1973) suggested that low platelet activity is a genetic
haplotype relative risk; marker in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia. Low
population stratification platelet MAO activity has also been associated with
alcoholism (Major and Murphy, 1978; Sullivan et al.,
1979) and subtypes of alcoholism (Sullivan et al., 1990;
von Knorring et al., 1991). Finally, there are several
reports regarding abnormal MAO activity in patients
with affective disorders (Samson et al., 1985; von Knor-
Contract grant sponsor: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse ring et al., 1985).
and Alcoholism; Contract grant number: AA09515; Contract
grant sponsor: National Institute of Mental Health; Contract More recently, Brunner et al. (1993a) reported a
grant number: MH 31302. large pedigree in which several males were affected by
*Correspondence to: Dr. Abbas Parsian, Department of Psy- a syndrome of borderline mental retardation and ex-
chiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, 4940 Chil- hibited abnormal behavior, in particular aggressive
dren’s Place, St. Louis, MO 63110. and violent behavior. The results of linkage analyses
Received 27 November 1996; Revised 8 April 1997 were positive (LOD 4 3.69) for the region Xp11.23–
© 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
476 Parsian and Todd

p11.4 which contains the MAO genes. Urine analysis However, Lim et al. (1995) repeated their study us-
showed a marked disturbance of monoamine metabo- ing additional polymorphisms in the MAO-A gene with
lism but platelet MAO-B activity was normal suggest- the same sample. Significant associations were found
ing a disturbance in MAO-A. In a later study (Brunner only in female bipolars and were suggestive that
et al., 1993b) a selective MAO-A enzyme deficiency was MAO-A may contribute to susceptibility to bipolar dis-
demonstrated in affected males. Amplification and se- order in a subgroup of individuals. Similarly, in the
quencing of the eighth exon of MAO-A gene detected Rubinsztein et al. (1996) case-control meta-analysis,
the presence of a C to T mutation at the nucleotide 936 significant associations were observed for female bipo-
in affected males and in carrier females but not in un- lars only.
affected males. The two point linkage analysis between In order to evaluate the possible role of the MAO
the clinical phenotype and the mutation in the MAO-A region in susceptibility to affective disorders in an in-
gene resulted in a LOD score of 3.55 without recombi- dependent sample, we have genotyped bipolar patients
nation. These investigators concluded that there was a of North American non-Hispanic white origin with mi-
complete and selective deficiency of MAO-A resulting crosatellites repeats at both the MAO-A and MAO-B
in illness in this family. genes. To overcome methodological problems of previ-
Based on the two reports mentioned above Lim et al. ous studies, we have used both normal control and pa-
(1994) argued that some of the behavioral characteris- rental alleles for comparison groups and have incorpo-
tics of the affected males are similar to symptoms ex- rated Monte Carlo simulations of allele frequency dif-
hibited by bipolar patients during the manic phase of ferences to estimate significance values.
their illness. Therefore, they hypothesized that either
the point mutation reported by Brunner et al. (1993b) MATERIAL AND METHODS
or other MAO-A mutations might contribute to bipolar
Subjects
affective disorder. A sample of 57 unrelated bipolar pa-
tients and 59 matched normal controls of western Eu- The subjects of this study consist of probands from
ropean extraction was genotyped with a microsatellite multiple incidence bipolar affective disorder pedigrees
repeat polymorphism in the MAO-A gene (Black et al., and psychiatric normal controls. The identification, as-
1991). The overall association between alleles of certainment, and evaluation of this sample have been
MAO-A and affective disorder was significant (x2 4 detailed in a previous report (Parsian et al., 1995a). All
24.63, P 4 0.0018). Allele A2 was less frequent and subjects are non-Hispanic white. The bipolar affective
allele A5 was more frequent in patients than controls disorder sample consists of 83 probands who met the
(x2 4 4.5, P 4 0.034; x2 4 3.58, P 4 0.058, respec- Research Diagnostic Criteria (RDC) and DSM-III-R di-
tively). Kawada et al. (1995) repeated the Lim et al. agnostic criteria. The probands are from families with
(1994) study in a Japanese population. The frequencies at least one other first degree relative with a diagnosis
of MAO-A alleles were compared between 58 bipolar of bipolar I, bipolar II, or schizoaffective/mania. The
patients and 68 controls. There was an overall differ- normal group consists of 84 unrelated individuals, as-
ence in allele frequencies (seven in their sample) be- certained through the Epidemiologic Catchment Area
tween the two groups (x2 4 14.03, df 4 6, P 4 0.029). (ECA) study, who met no DSM-III-R criteria for affec-
However, in their sample, allele A4 was more frequent tive disorder, alcoholism, schizophrenia, or other psy-
and allele A5 less frequent in the bipolar group than chotic or drug use disorders. DNA from parents was
controls (x2 4 4.14, P 4 0.042; x2 4 6.31, P 4 0.012, also available for 56 of the bipolar probands.
respectively). However, the differences were not sig-
nificant after correction for multiple tests. It was sug- Genotyping
gested that bipolar disorder is in linkage disequilib-
rium with the (CA)n polymorphism of the MAO-A locus The genotyping method is detailed in previous pub-
but that the associated marker alleles have reversed in lications (Parsian et al., 1995b) and briefly described
the two ethnic populations (Kawada et al., 1995). Ru- here. For the MAO-A simple sequence repeat polymor-
binsztein et al. (1996), studying a small sample of bi- phism (SSRP), the polymerase chain reaction (PCR)
polar and matched neurological controls, reported an reactions were preheated to 94°C for 5 min, followed by
excess of alleles 5 and 6 and a deficiency of allele 2 in 22 cycles each for 30 sec at 94°C, 45 sec at 61°C, 45 sec
East Anglians of English origin. at 72°C, and a final extension for 5 min at 72°C. For the
Nöthen et al. (1995) used the haplotype relative risk MAO-B SSRP, the PCR reactions were preheated at
approach in a sample of 82 unrelated German bipolar 94°C for 1.5 min, followed by 25 cycles each for 1 min at
patients and their parents. No significant overall asso- 94°C, 1 min at 58°C, 1 min at 72°C, and a final exten-
ciation was observed for MAO-A in their sample but sion for 7 min at 72°C. The sizes of the fragments for
allele A5 showed a trend toward overrepresentation in both MAO-A and MAO-B were identical to those pre-
the patient alleles. They concluded that the positive viously reported (Black et al., 1991; Konradi et al.,
findings of Lim et al. (1994) and Kawada et al. (1995) 1992). In addition, we detected three new alleles for
are due to chance or to undetected population stratifi- MAO-B gene in the bipolar and normal control groups
cation. In a case-control study of Western Europeans (Table II). All genotypes were independently scored by
Craddock et al. (1995), using the three polymorphisms two investigators without knowledge of clinical group
of the MAO-A gene, also could not detect any evidence status. To insure that allele scoring was identical for
for allelic association between any of the markers and all groups, selected samples from each group were co-
bipolar disorder for males or females. electrophoresed.
Manic Depression and Monoamine Oxidase 477

Statistical and Genetic Analyses matching. Falk and Rubinstein (1987) developed an al-
ternative approach termed haplotype relative risk
Relative-risk allele frequency comparisons were per- (HRR) analysis in which both the parents of the pro-
formed using x2 or Fisher’s exact tests. Male and fe- band and the proband are genotyped and non-
male allele frequencies were tested separately and to- transmitted parental alleles are considered as controls.
gether. For simultaneous comparisons of the frequen- A modified haplotype relative risk analysis was per-
cies of multiple alleles (where many values are less formed for the total available sample of bipolar pro-
than five) the x2 probability distribution was estimated bands and parents (56 proband-parent trios) and sepa-
using Monte Carlo simulation (Roff and Bentzen, 1989) rately by proband gender. Of the total 56 trios there
as implemented by a computer program developed by were 16 male probands and 18 female probands with
George Carmody (Carleton University, Ottawa, On- fully informative parents for MAO-A and B. The sum-
tario). The advantage of this computational approach is mary of these HRR analyses for MAO-B is depicted by
that x2 simulations with estimated standard errors can allele in Table III. There were no significant differences
be completed in a matter of minutes without collapsing between transmitted and non-transmitted alleles for
cells with small numbers of observations. Similarly, MAO-B. There were also no significant differences in
contingency table analyses were used to test for link- allele frequencies of bipolar probands used in the hap-
age disequilibrium between alleles of the MAO-A and lotype relative risk analyses and the total bipolar pro-
MAO-B loci. This assessment was restricted to males band group (x2 4 1.876, P 4 0.934 ± 0.003 for MAO-B).
where chromosome X haplotypes were unambiguous. There were fewer transmitted allele 3s for MAO-B (6
Haplotype relative risk (HRR) analyses, were per- vs. 8) but this difference was not significant. Given the
formed on the entire sample and separately for males large effect size of the MAO-B case-control study (W 4
and females as described by Falk and Rubinstein 0.42 for females and W 4 0.51 for males), the combined
(1987) except that individual alleles, rather than geno- HRR sample had 80 percent power to detect a differ-
types, were contrasted (Parsian et al., 1995a). Power ence in frequency between transmitted and non-
calculations were completed as described in Cohen transmitted alleles at a significance level of a 4 0.05
(1988) for contingency table analyses. (Cohen, 1988). There were also no significant differ-
ences in transmitted and non-transmitted allele fre-
RESULTS quencies for MAO-A.
Tables I and II present the allele frequencies for the The MAO-A and MAO-B genes are only 50 Kb (kilo-
MAO-A and B genes for 83 bipolar and 84 normal in- base) apart, but are usually reported to be in linkage
dividuals. To compare all alleles together, Monte Carlo equilibrium (Parsian et al., 1995b). There was no sug-
simulations of the x2 probability distribution were per- gestion of linkage disequilibrium between MAO-A and
formed (Roff and Bentzen, 1989) using a computer pro- MAO-B for both the normal control sample (P 4 0.79)
gram developed by Carmody (1995). For MAO-A the and the bipolar sample (P 4 0.89). Unambiguous hap-
overall comparisons between bipolar and normal con- lotypes were available for males in both the normal
trol groups for both genders were not significant. For control (n 4 42) and the bipolar (n 4 22) groups. There
MAO-B the overall comparisons for both genders were were no significant differences between haplotype fre-
highly significant (P < 0.003). To determine which al- quencies in the two groups.
leles contribute to the MAO-B group difference, similar
analyses were conducted for each allele separately. For DISCUSSION
the male group, no allele was significantly more fre-
quent in the bipolar group. There was a trend for a In this study, we used simple sequence repeat poly-
decreased frequency of allele B2 and an increased fre- morphisms of the MAO-A and MAO-B genes to exam-
quency of allele B7 (P < 0.1, corrected for multiple com- ine the relationship of these genes to bipolar affective
parisons). For females, the frequencies of alleles B2 disorder. The polymorphism in the MAO-A gene is due
and B3 were significantly decreased in the bipolar to a (CA)n repeat near the second exon (Black et al.,
group (P < 0.008). 1991). The second intron of MAO-B gene contains a
As described above, in case-control (relative risk) (GT)n repeat which produces a highly informative poly-
analyses there are always questions about group morphism (Konradi et al., 1992). We compared the al-

TABLE I. Allele Frequencies for MAO-A Gene in Bipolar Affective Disorder and Normal Control Groups Categorized by Gender
Allelesa
Group 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Total
Bipolar
Male 4 2 2 0 3 19 2 0 32
Female 3 16 2 7 19 52 2 1 102
Control
Male 3 8 3 0 8 16 4 0 42
Female 7 15 3 5 9 37 4 0 80
a
Allele sizes: 126-112 bp (1–8). There were no within group significant differences between males and females. Comparing all alleles together, the
differences between the two groups were not significant (males x26 4 5.90, P 4 0.333 ± 0.005; females x27 4 7.38, P 4 0.439 ± 0.005; combined x27 4 6.91,
P 4 0.439 ± 0.005). MAO-A, monoamine oxidase-A.
478 Parsian and Todd

TABLE II. Allele Frequencies for MAO-B Gene in Bipolar Affective Disorder and Normal Control Groups Categorized by Gender
Allelesa
Group 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 12 Total
Bipolar
Male 0 0 4 9 5 6 8 0 0 32
Female 0 0 17 23 20 18 17 4 3 102
Control
Male 0 8 14 9 6 3 2 2 0 44
Female 1 8 31 10 16 8 5 1 0 80
a
Allele sizes: 184-160 bp (1–12). Within groups, there were no significant differences between males and females. Comparing all alleles together, the
differences between the two groups were highly significant (males x26 4 18.82, P 4 0.003 ± 0.001; females x28 4 31.64, P < 0.000 ± 0.000; combined
x28 4 47.01, P < 0.000 ± 0.000).

lele frequencies of these two genes between a bipolar A5 was more frequent but in the second study allele A4
affective disorder group (n 4 83) and a normal control was more frequent. However, allele A5 is less frequent
group (n 4 84). The results of this relative-risk analy- in the Japanese groups. Lim et al. (1995) subsequently
sis were highly significant for MAO-B but not for MAO- reported a positive association between female bipolars
A. The two study groups were unrelated non-hispanic and two additional polymorphisms in MAO-A gene.
whites from the same geographical areas. This study is not a replication, however, for at least two
In order to further explore this result, we performed reasons. First, their bipolar and control groups are the
haplotype relative risk (HRR) analysis on a subset of 56 same in both studies. Second, as stated in their report,
bipolar probands on whom parent DNA was available. the two additional polymorphisms are in linkage dis-
For this analysis 34 out of 56 pairs of parents were fully equilibrium with the (CA) n repeat polymorphism.
informative. The power of HRR method is identical to
Therefore, we would expect to see the same trend of
that of RR method for equal group sizes. The differ-
association for all three polymorphisms. More interest-
ences between overall transmitted and non-
transmitted alleles were not significant for both ingly, the study by Craddock et al. (1995) used a larger
MAO-A and B. To advance our analysis further, we sample (84 bipolars and 84 controls) from the same
compared haplotypes in males (because their phase is general population as Lim et al. [1994, 1995] (United
known) for both bipolar and normal control groups. For Kingdom) and found no association with any of the
both groups the MAO-A and MAO-B loci were in link- three polymorphisms of the MAO-A gene. Collapsing
age equilibrium and there were no significant group results across three studies Rubinsztein et al. (1996)
differences in haplotype frequencies. Given the differ- reported an association of MAOs and bipolar disorder
ence in MAO-B results using the two methods, the for females only. Nöthen et al. (1995) is the only study
most parsimonious explanation is that we have de- in which the HRR method was used for MAO-A and
tected population stratification at the MAO-B locus for their negative results are similar to ours.
case-control selected from outbred North American In summary, our current evidence does not support
whites of non-Hispanic origin. the association of alleles of the MAO-A or MAO-B loci
Lim et al. (1994) reported an overall x2 value of 24.63 with bipolar affective disorder but does suggest that
(P 4 0.0018) when comparing MAO-A allele frequen- population stratification is an important source of bias
cies in 57 unrelated bipolar patients with 59 normal among non-Hispanic whites from North America. Cau-
controls of Western European extraction. It is interest- tion should be used in interpreting the results of case-
ing that Kawada et al. (1995) detected a similar differ- control genotyping studies when confirmation is lack-
ence in a Japanese population. In the first study, allele ing from studies using different theoretical approaches.

TABLE III. Haplotype Relative Risk Analysis for MAO-B


Male probanda Female probandb Totalc
Maternal Maternal Maternal Maternal Maternal Maternal
transmitted nontransmitted transmitted nontransmitted transmitted nontransmitted
Allele number (n 4 16) (n 4 16) (n 4 18) (n 4 18) (n 4 34) (n 4 34)
3 2 3 4 5 6 8
4 7 7 4 4 11 11
5 3 2 3 5 6 7
6 2 0 2 1 4 1
7 2 2 3 2 5 4
8 0 0 0 1 0 1
9 0 1 0 0 0 1
10 0 1 0 0 0 1
12 0 0 2 0 2 0
a
Maternal transmitted vs. nontransmitted (n 4 32); x26 4 4.400, P 4 0.766 ± 0.004.
b
Maternal transmitted vs. nontransmitted (n 4 36); x26 4 4.144, P 4 0.787 ± 0.004.
c
Total maternal transmitted vs. nontransmitted (n 4 68); x28 4 7.274, P 4 0.558 ± 0.005.
Manic Depression and Monoamine Oxidase 479

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Major LF, Murphy DL (1978): Platelet and plasma amine oxidase activity
in alcoholic individuals. Br J Psychiatry 132:528–554.
We thank Dr. Ted Reich for providing additional bi- Murphy DL, Wyatt RJ (1972): Reduced platelet monoamine oxidase activ-
polar samples, Lorienne Fisher for technical support, ity in chronic schizophrenia. Nature 238:225–228.
and Jan Konrad for manuscript preparation. This work Nöthen MM, Eggerman K, Albus M, Borrman M, Rietschel M, Körner J,
Maier W, Minges J, Lichtermann D, Franzek E, Weigelt B, Knapp M,
was supported in part by the National Institute on Al- Propping P (1995): Association analysis of the monoamine oxidase A
cohol Abuse and Alcoholism (AA09515) and the Na- gene in bipolar affective disorder by using family-based internal con-
tional Institute of Mental Health (MH 31302). trols. Am J Hum Genet 57:975–977.
Parsian A, Chakraverty S, Todd Rd (1995a): Possible association between
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