The enzyme catechol-O-methyl transferase (COMT) is significantly involved in dopamine's catabolism, especially in the prefrontal cortex. The association between several schizophrenic phenotype traits and the presence of prefrontal hypodopaminergia is well known. The purpose of this study was to determine if variations in the gene that encodes this enzyme constitute a risk factor for the development of schizophrenia in our Spanish patient sample.

the study included a total of 199 Spanish male DSM-IV-TR schizophrenic patients and a sample of 186 male healthy controls. Genotyping was performed using Single Strand Conformation Polymorphism (SSCP) of amplified fragments by DNA polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Statistical analysis was done using SPSS (V. 11.0), PHASE (V. 2.0) software and Genetic Data Analysis (GDA).

our results indicate that the homozygous genotypes for Val108/158Met polymorphism are more prevalent in schizophrenic patients than in control population (62% vs. 50%; p: 0.04); regarding the C610G polymorphism, no differences were observed in this sample.

our findings warrant the study of COMT gene in independent samples in order to establish the possible correlation of variants of this gene and the development of schizophrenia in Spanish male population.