Oxytocin receptor gene polymorphism (rs2254298) interacts with familial risk for psychopathology to predict symptoms of depression and anxiety in adolescent girls

Abstract

The nonapeptide oxytocin and its receptor have been implicated in the regulation of mammalian social behavior and stress physiology. Evidence is accumulating that the quality of the parental environment is associated with oxytocin biology in children. The present study was designed to examine the interaction of the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs2254298 within the oxytocin receptor (OXTR) gene and quality of parental environment in predicting children's psychosocial functioning. More specifically, in a sample of 92 Caucasian adolescent girls (9-14 years old), we examined whether adverse parental environment, operationalized as mothers' history of recurrent major depressive disorder, interacts with the rs2254298 SNP on the OXTR gene to predict daughters' symptoms of depression and anxiety. Caucasian girls who both were heterozygous for the OXTR rs2254298 polymorphism and had high early adversity reported the highest levels of symptoms of depression, physical anxiety, and social anxiety. These findings highlight the potential importance of this OXTR gene polymorphism in the etiology of depression and anxiety disorders.

Figure 1

Mean symptom levels of depression and anxiety by early adversity and OXTR rs2254298. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals (CI). Mean differences are statistically significant at p < .05 when the proportion overlap between CIs is half the average margin of error between two groups (Cumming & Finch, 2005). * = high-adversity AG group differs significantly from the other three groups. Note that the measure of depressive symptoms has a different scaling than do the four measures of anxiety symptoms.