Association of the characteristics of brain magnetic resonance imaging with genes related to disease onset in schizophrenia patients

Background

Schizophrenia (SCH) is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder, whose pathogenesis is not fully elucidated. This article aims to reveal disease-specific brain structural and functional changes and their potential genetic basis by analyzing the characteristics of brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in SCH patients and related gene expression patterns. Methods: Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between SCH and healthy control (NC) groups in the GSE48072 dataset were identified and functionally analyzed, and a protein-protein interaction (PPI) network was fabricated to screen for core genes (CGs). Meanwhile, MRI data from the COBRE, the Human Connectome Project (HCP), the 1000 Functional Connectomes Project (FCP), and the Consortium for Reliability and Reproducibility (CoRR) were utilized to explore differences in brain activity patterns between SCH patients and NC group using a 3D deep aggregation network (3D DANet) machine learning approach. A correlation analysis was performed between the identified CGs and MRI imaging characteristics. Results: 82 DEGs were collected from the GSE48072 dataset, primarily involved in cytotoxic granules, growth factor binding, and graft-versus-host disease pathways. The construction of the PPI network revealed KLRD1, KLRF1, CD244, GZMH, GZMA, GZMB, PRF1, and SLAMF6 as CGs. SCH patients exhibited relatively enhanced activity patterns in the frontoparietal attention network (FAN) and default mode network (DMN) across four datasets, while showing a trend of weakening in most other networks. The 3D DANet demonstrated higher accuracy, specificity, and sensitivity in brain image classification. The correlation between enhancement of the DMN and genetic abnormalities was the strongest, followed by the enhancement of the frontal and parietal attention networks. In contrast, the correlation between the weakening of the sensory-motor network and occipital network and genetic abnormalities was relatively weak. The strongest correlation was observed between MRI characteristics and the KLRD1 and CD244 genes. Conclusion: The granzyme-mediated programmed cell death signaling pathway is related to pathogenesis of SCH, and CD244 may serve as potential biological markers for diagnosing SCH. The correlation between enhancement of the DMN and genetic abnormalities was the strongest, followed by the enhancement of the frontal and parietal attention networks. In contrast, the correlation between weakening of the sensory-motor network and occipital network and genetic abnormalities was relatively weak. Additionally, the strongest correlation was observed between MRI features and the KLRD1 and CD244 genes. The use of the 3D DANet method has improved the detection precision of brain structural and functional changes in SCH patients, providing a new perspective for understanding the biological basis of the disease.