1. Introduction
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) is a neurodevelopmental disease, beginning in childhood but extending through to adulthood. ASD is characterised by impairments in reciprocal social interaction and communication, and by restricted or stereotyped patterns of interests and activities. This disorder has received much scientific and social attention [1,2]. ASD is more common than previously supposed with a frequency of 0.6-3 out of 100 births [2-6] and occurs either sporadically or in a familial pattern, and far more commonly in males [7-9]. The etiology remains largely unknown [10]. Previously we demonstrated that CD38 acts as a ‘niceness’ protein for mouse social behavior, by regulating release of oxytocin (OT) [11], which seems to be essential for mutual recognition and trust [12,13]. Therefore, here, we describe our results on single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of CD38 in ASD patients and control subjects [14]. In addition, we report our experience of treatment of one ASD patient with a CD38 SNP by nasal OT administration.
2. Results
Figures 1 and 2 show human CD38 expression in the frontal cortex, cerebellum, hypothalamus and amygdala, by RT-PCR with human brain RNA samples which were used for synthesizing cDNAs. CD38 mRNA was highly expressed in the hypothalamus in the human brain, suggesting that CD38 has an important role on human social behavior, as in the mouse [11].
Armed with this new information aboutCD38 in the human brain, we set out to examine the human
subjects (thesample set A in Table 1) fulfilling
In the following experiments, we focused mainly on this mutation, because of functional abnormality in R140W-substituted-CD38: (1) The R140 is relatively well conserved among multiple species except for the rodent (Figure 3c). R140 is located in the flexible loop (137-141) at the midpoint of the N- and C-ternimus domains between two helical domains (a4
and a5) and is the pivot of the hinge region connecting two regions of L-shaped molecule [17]. Therefore, the mutation (W140) causes severe perturbations of the predicted protein structure, if compared with the human (R140), rabbit (K140) or mouse (G140) CD38 (see Figure 7 in ref.14). (2) Indeed, the mutant W140-CD38 showed one third of ADP-ribosyl cyclase activity of wild-type CD38 expressed in the CHO cells [15]. (3) Social amnesia was not rescued by local expression of W140-CD38 in the hypothalamus in
Sample set | Subject number | Male/Female | Age | Description | Country | W140 allele frequency | Reference | |
range | average | |||||||
A | 29 | (23/6) | 12 to 44 | 22.8+/-7.6 | Unrelated ASD | Japan* | 0.052 | |
B | 3 | (3/0) | 21 to 44 | 30.0+/- 7.1 | 3 probands in A | Japan* | 1 | |
C | 25 | (15/10) | 21 to 84 | 53.0+/-4.6 | 3 families in B | Japan* | 0.32 | |
D | 252 | (252/0) | ASD | USA** | 0 | 20, 21 | ||
E | 201 | (106/95) | 22 to 64 | 32.5+/-0.9 | Unscreened control | Japan* | 0.007 | |
*In the Kanazawa area | **AGRE samples |
SNP* | Control | ASD | ||||||
N | Allele counts | Frquency | N | Allele counts | Frequency | |||
SNP01 | rs3796878 | G"/>A | 400 | 4 | 0.01 | 58 | 0 | 0 |
SNP02 | rs3796875 | A"/>G | 398 | 100 | 0.25 | 56 | 18 | 0.321 |
SNP03 | rs6449197 | C"/>T | 392 | 81 | 0.207 | 58 | 16 | 0.275 |
SNP04 | rs11574927 | A"/>G | 402 | 78 | 0.195 | 58 | 6 | 0.103 |
SNP05 | rs10805347 | A"/>G | 400 | 180 | 0.452 | 58 | 22 | 0.379 |
SNP06 | rs3796863 | C"/>A | 398 | 148 | 0.371 | 58 | 20 | 0.345 |
SNP07 | rs1130169 | C"/>T | 398 | 36 | 0.341 | 56 | 15 | 0.268 |
SNP08 | rs13137313 | A"/>G | 398 | 176 | 0.442 | 58 | 28 | 0.483 |
SNP09 | rs17476066 | T"/>C | 392 | 46 | 0.117 | 58 | 6 | 0.103 |
SNP10 | rs3733593 | C"/>T | 398 | 128 | 0.32 | 56 | 17 | 0.305 |
SNP11 | C"/>G | 402 | 1 | 0.002 | 58 | 0 | 0 | |
SNP12 | C"/>T | 402 | 0 | 0 | 58 | 1 | 0.017 | |
SNP13 | rs1800561 | C"/>T | 402 | 3 | 0.008 | 58 | 3 | 0.052 |
SNP14 | rs1800051 | A"/>C | 402 | 59 | 0.146 | 58 | 13 | 0.22 |
SNP15 | C"/>T | 402 | 6 | 0.015 | 58 | 0 | 0 |
The 140R/W (C4693T) heterozygotes were found in 3 male subjects (sample set B; two autistic and one Asperger) out of 29 ASD patients examined (23 males and 6 females with the mean age = 22.8 7.6; prevalence of 10.3% of ASD samples). We examined whether or not the W140 allele seems to be co-segregated with ASD and ASD-related traits in 3 probands’ families. Twenty five members of the 3 kindred families (sample set C) were available for detailed clinical and genetic analyses (Figure 4). The 4693C-to-T change was found in all probands’ fathers in the 3 families and brothers in the 2 families (Family #1 and #3). The mutation is present in the grandmother of the father’s side in the Family #1 (1-I-4) and is also predicted to be transmitted from the late grandmother of the father’s side in the
Family #3 (3-I-3), in an apparently autosomal dominant fashion. We found a total of 18carriers in 28 family members cooperative (prevalence=64%). In all cases the mutation was heterozygous (allelic frequency=0.32). The mutant allele was indeed transcribed in the subjects tested (Figure 5).
The kindred were clinically evaluated by interviewing. The probands’ young (1-III-2 in the Family #1) and old (3-III-1 in the family #3) brothersshowed clinical features conforming to PDD-NOS (PDD not otherwise specified) or Asperger. Two fathers (1-II-2 and 3-II-1) in their 50s and another father (2-I-1) in his 70s were all diagnosed as having with ASD traits. Most other adults over 50 years old in these pedigrees had not been clinically diagnosed with ASD or other psychiatric diseases, though some showed personal traits such as eccentricity, resulting in 8 ASD subjects out of 13 male carriers (62%). Interestingly, four young female cousins with (1-III-3 and 1-III-4 in the family #1) and without (3-III-3 and 3-III-4 in the family #3) the mutation, had no clinical ASD phenotype.
We also evaluated them from the score of the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) [18,19], in which older subjects esteemed themselve by recalling behaviours at their life period of 20s. AQ scores in two young male carriers in the family #1 (1-III-1 and -2) fulfilled the criteria (cut-off point of 28) of ASD, though this score was not obtained from two other ASD probands (in the families #2 and #3), because of low intelligence (Figure 6). Some carriers’ scores were above the standard deviation of average values in noncarrier family members who showed normal control scores, indicating that such carriers may be considered to manifest ASD traits, even though not affected at the clinical level (Figure 6a). Statistically there is no difference between three different age groups (young, middle and old generations), but the males’ score was significantly higher than that of females (
Given these results, we obtained serum samples from the kindreds to further study the connection between the human
We also analysed the R140W mutation in 252 ASD subjects (excluding Hispanic and Asian peoples) recruited to the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange (AGRE; http://www.agre.org) [21] in USA (sample set D [22]). No mutation was found, suggesting ethnicity-dependent frequency differences. Finally, from 201 healthy unscreened control subjects (sample set E), 2 females and 1 male were positive for the mutation, representing allelic frequency of 0.007 (Tables 2 and 3). This frequency is 7.4-fold lower than those (0.052) in ASD patient group in the same residential area (
One proband receiving intranasal OT for 6 months showed improvements in the area of social approach, eye-contact and communication behavior without serious adverse effects. These results suggest that the
3. Discussion
ASD is heterogeneous and forms a continuum, and thus is likely to involve many genes [7-10,23-26].
The heterozygous 4693C/T carriers were identified in Japanese and Italian general populations [16,27]. The presence of this mutation in Japanese has already been reported in the HapMap site (http://www.hapmap.org/) and by Yagui
A noteworthy role for OT in social recognition has been shown in rodent and human studies [12,13]. Recently, a 1.1-Mb deletion of 20p13 including the OT gene (copy number decrease) has been detected in a child with Asperger disorder [8]. An association of one or two intronic SNPs in the OT receptor gene with autism has also been reported [25,28,29], suggesting that defects in OT signaling confer genetic vulnerability to ASD. Though the R140W mutation was not found in 252 American AGRE samples, the association study with tagSNPs showed one SNP (SNP06; rs3796863) that is positively related (
In conclusion,
4. Methods summary
Clinical and genetic studies were carried out according to institutional guidelines after ethical approval of participating institutions and informed consent was obtained from all participating patients. A total of 29 unrelated affected individuals out of 96 in the Kanazawa area in Japan (Sample set A) were admitted the Kanazawa University Hospital diagnosed with DSM-IV in accordance with clinical criteria. Blood and platelet biochemical analyses were performed in 29 ASD probands and their parents and family members who agreed to supply. Genotyping for the association study and mutation screening were performed by direct sequencing or TaqMan technology. PCR products were sequenced with the BigDye Terminator Cycle Sequencing Kit (V3.1, Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA, USA). Samples were then subjected to electrophoresis, using an ABI PRISM genetic analyzer (Applied Biosystems). Absence of genotyping errors was controlled by sequencing the PCR product with the opposite primer in a subset of patients.
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