Negative Symptoms of Psychosis Correlate with Gene Expression of the Wnt/β-Catenin Signaling Pathway in Peripheral Blood

Abstract

Genes in the Wnt (wingless)/β-catenin signaling pathway have been implicated in schizophrenia pathogenesis. No study has examined this pathway in the broader context of psychosis symptom severity. We investigated the association between symptom severity scores and expression of 25 Wnt pathway genes in blood from 19 psychotic patients. Significant correlations between negative symptom scores and deshivelled 2 (DVL2) (radj = −0.70; P = 0.0008) and glycogen synthase kinase 3 beta (GSK3B) (radj = 0.48; P = 0.039) were observed. No gene expression levels were associated with positive symptoms. Our findings suggest that the Wnt signaling pathway may harbor biomarkers for severity of negative but not positive symptoms.