Brain specimens from the University of Pittsburgh Program are obtained during routine autopsies conducted at the Allegheny County Office of the Medical Examiner (Pittsburgh) following the consent of the next of kin 54. An independent committee of experienced research clinicians makes consensus DSM-IV diagnoses for all subjects on the basis of medical records and structured diagnostic interviews conducted with the decedent’s family member 55. All procedures for Pitt samples have been approved by the University of Pittsburgh’s Committee for the Oversight of Research involving the Dead and Institutional Review Board for Biomedical Research. At autopsy, the right hemisphere of each brain is blocked coronally, immediately frozen, and stored at −80°C56. Samples for this study contained only the gray matter of DLPFC, where Brodmann area 9/46 was cut on a cryostat and collected in tubes appropriate for DNA or RNA extraction. The DNA and RNA tubes were shipped on dry ice to ISMMS as homogenized tissue in trizol for RNA extraction and thinly sliced tissue for DNA extraction. Specimens from Pitt were provided as matched case/control pairs. These were perfectly matched
