The Impact of COMT and Childhood Maltreatment on Suicidal Behaviour in Affective Disorders.
Alexandra BerneggerKlemens KienesbergerLaura CarlbergPatrick SwobodaBirgit LudwigRomina KollerMichelle InanerMelanie ZotterNestor KapustaMartin AignerHelmuth HaslacherSiegfried KasperAlexandra SchosserPublished in: Scientific reports (2018)
The inconsistent findings on the association between COMT (catecholamine-O-methyl-transferase) and suicidal behaviour gave reason to choose a clear phenotype description of suicidal behaviour and take childhood maltreatment as environmental factor into account. The aim of this candidate-gene-association study was to eliminate heterogeneity within the sample by only recruiting affective disorder patients and find associations between COMT polymorphisms and defined suicidal phenotypes. In a sample of 258 affective disorder patients a detailed clinical assessment (e.g. CTQ, SCAN, HAMD, SBQ-R, VI-SURIAS, LPC) was performed. DNA of peripheral blood samples was genotyped using TaqMan® SNP Genotyping Assays. We observed that the haplotype GAT of rs737865, rs6269, rs4633 is significantly associated with suicide attempt (p = 0.003 [pcorr = 0.021]), and that there is a tendency towards self-harming behaviour (p = 0.02 [pcorr = 0.08]) and also NSSI (p = 0.03 [pcorr = 0.08]), though the p values did not resist multiple testing correction. The same effect we observed with the 4-marker slide window haplotype, GATA of rs737865, rs6269, rs4633, rs4680 (p = 0.009 [pcorr = 0.045]). The findings support an association between the COMT gene and suicidal behaviour phenotypes with and without childhood maltreatment as environmental factor.
Keyphrases
- depressive symptoms
- end stage renal disease
- ejection fraction
- genome wide
- newly diagnosed
- bipolar disorder
- chronic kidney disease
- computed tomography
- peritoneal dialysis
- prognostic factors
- high throughput
- transcription factor
- early life
- copy number
- gene expression
- risk assessment
- magnetic resonance imaging
- cell free