Association between Catechol-O-Methyltransferase (COMT) gene rs4680 SNP and rs165599 SNP and schizophrenia: A meta-analysis of case-control studies

The relationship between schizophrenia and single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the Catechol-O-MethylTransferase (COMT) gene has been investigated in numerous research, yielding varying conclusions. The investigation aimed to perform a meta-analysis for the purpose of determining the combined impact measure of the association of the COMT gene rs165599 SNP and ra4680 SNP with schizophrenia. The effect size used to assess the relationship between these two SNPs and schizophrenia was the odds ratio (OR). R studio was used to achieve the pooled ORs. Additionally, for the sake of assessing bias of publications, this paper utilize the Egger's test. Meta-analyses involving 19 independent studies have not revealed a statistically significant association between rs4680 and rs165599 SNPs and schizophrenia; however, the A versus A genetic model regarding rs4680 SNP has demonstrated a positive association with schizophrenia (OR=0.86,95% CI = 0.75-0.99, I= 42%,P= 0.04), which is dependent on two studies. According to this study, there may be no association between the COMT gene rs16599 SNP and rs4680 SNP and the risk of schizophrenia or its psychopathological symptoms.