Family history as an important factor for stratifying participants in genetic studies of major depression

Depression is estimated to affect 350 million people worldwide. The World Mental Health Survey conducted in 17 countries found that, on average, about one in 20 people reported having an episode of depression in the previous year. Although depression has been shown to be moderately heritable by stud...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Balkan journal of medical genetics 2018-10, Vol.21 (1), p.5-12
Main Authors: Zalar, B, Blatnik, A, Maver, A, Klemenc-Ketiš, Z, Peterlin, B
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alleles
comt gene
Family history
gene
Genetic diversity
Genetic structure
Genotypes
Health risk assessment
Heritability
Major depressive disorder (MDD)
Mental depression
Mental disorders
Original
pclo gene
slc6a4 gene
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Summary:Depression is estimated to affect 350 million people worldwide. The World Mental Health Survey conducted in 17 countries found that, on average, about one in 20 people reported having an episode of depression in the previous year. Although depression has been shown to be moderately heritable by studies conducted in the past, the search for its so-called missing heritability has so far been unsuccessful. The difficulty in identifying common genetic variants predisposing to depression could be due to large sample sizes needed to detect small effects on genetic risk and the heterogeneous nature of major depressive disorder (MDD). The aim of our study was to determine whether there was a connection between a family history of depression in MDD patients and the presence of putative risk variants in the well-studied , and genes. We analyzed 133 patients with MDD (30.0% with a positive family history for MDD and 70.0% sporadic cases) and compared them to 279 healthy controls. When comparing all the depressed patients to controls, no significant differences in genotype and allele distributions were detected. After stratifying patients according to their family history, the rs2522833 C allele was shown to be significantly less common in patients with a positive family history ( = 0.001), indicating a possible difference in the genetic structure of MDD between familial and sporadic cases and a less important role of the common genetic risk variants for the development of MDD in familial cases.
ISSN:1311-0160
2199-5761
1311-0160
DOI:10.2478/bjmg-2018-0010