COMT Val158Met Polymorphism Modulates Huntington's Disease Progression

PLoS One. 2016 Sep 22;11(9):e0161106. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0161106. eCollection 2016.

Abstract

Little is known about the genetic factors modulating the progression of Huntington's disease (HD). Dopamine levels are affected in HD and modulate executive functions, the main cognitive disorder of HD. We investigated whether the Val158Met polymorphism of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene, which influences dopamine (DA) degradation, affects clinical progression in HD. We carried out a prospective longitudinal multicenter study from 1994 to 2011, on 438 HD gene carriers at different stages of the disease (34 pre-manifest; 172 stage 1; 130 stage 2; 80 stage 3; 17 stage 4; and 5 stage 5), according to Total Functional Capacity (TFC) score. We used the Unified Huntington's Disease Rating Scale to evaluate motor, cognitive, behavioral and functional decline. We genotyped participants for COMT polymorphism (107 Met-homozygous, 114 Val-homozygous and 217 heterozygous). 367 controls of similar ancestry were also genotyped. We compared clinical progression, on each domain, between groups of COMT polymorphisms, using latent-class mixed models accounting for disease duration and number of CAG (cytosine adenine guanine) repeats. We show that HD gene carriers with fewer CAG repeats and with the Val allele in COMT polymorphism displayed slower cognitive decline. The rate of cognitive decline was greater for Met/Met homozygotes, which displayed a better maintenance of cognitive capacity in earlier stages of the disease, but had a worse performance than Val allele carriers later on. COMT polymorphism did not significantly impact functional and behavioral performance. Since COMT polymorphism influences progression in HD, it could be used for stratification in future clinical trials. Moreover, DA treatments based on the specific COMT polymorphism and adapted according to disease duration could potentially slow HD progression.

Grants and funding

A-C Bachoud-Lévi is the PI of the biomarker program initially funded by Gis A02216JS/A04159JS and then by Assistance Publique—Hôpitaux de Paris (Département de la Recherche Clinique et du Développement); she had full access to all of the data for this study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of data analysis. She is supported by an interface contract from INSERM and is the Head of the French National Center for Huntington’s Disease (funded by the French Ministry of Health). R de Diego-Balaguer was supported by grant PSI2011-23624 from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO). C Schramm was supported by the NeuroStemcell Consortium (European Community Seventh Framework Program grant agreement no. 222943) and by investment for the future NeurATRIS: Infrastructure de recherche translationnelle pour les biothérapies en Neurosciences (ANR-11-INBS-0011). Additional support was provided by ANR-10-LBX-0087 IEC and ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02 PSL* grants. A Dürr, A Brice, V Damotte, I Rebeix and B Fontaine were supported by IHU grant ANR-10-IAIHU-06. L Cleret de Langavant was supported by an AP-HP/CEA interface contract. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, the decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.