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Project

Strategies project: Genetic and epigenetic aspects. Depressive symptoms in adolescence: genes & environment

In medicine, and in particular in psychiatry, the interaction of an individual's predisposition, e.g., genetic make-up, and the environment the individual is exposed to - often "stress"- remain key factors in etiology of disease and a lack of wellbeing. Different methods have been suggested to investigate susceptibility for a particular disorder, but investigating this interplay has often been limited to single polymorphisms (e.g., 5-HTTLPR). In this PhD project we apply approaches from the field of complex genetics to investigate polygenic gene-environment interactions and methylation analyses, epigenome-wide and region specific, respectively. Our aim is to increase the understanding of how the individual's vulnerability can interact with the exposure of interest. We apply this framework on a dataset with 1103 adolescents. First we focus on how particular genes can increase sensitivity for the perceived parental environment, for which we are the first to apply a method summarizing the information from our 5052 SNPs in 344 genes into a gene-based interaction statistic. We investigate the interaction with perceived support, perceived psychological control and perceived harsh punishment. Depressive symptoms as reported by the adolescents is our outcome measure of interest (CES-D). To further investigate the impact of perceived parenting on the adolescent's wellbeing from a biological perspective, we also investigate whether the familial climate as defined by five perceived parenting dimensions can affect DNA methylation on a subset of our primary sample. Apart from the epigenome wide analysis, we identify a specific region of interest to validate and replicate in combination with NR3C1 (1F-region), a well-studied candidate gene in a larger sample and using a different method. Finally, DNA methylation in this gene will also be investigated longitudinally.

Date:1 Aug 2013 →  5 Mar 2018
Keywords:Gene-environment interactions, Parenting, Depressive symptoms in adolescents, Epigenetics
Disciplines:Psychiatry and psychotherapy, Nursing, Other paramedical sciences, Clinical and counselling psychology, Other psychology and cognitive sciences
Project type:PhD project