@article{ref1,
title="A preliminary examination of the relationship between the 5-HTTLPR and childhood emotional abuse on depressive symptoms in 10-12-year-old youth",
journal="Psychological trauma: theory, research, practice, and policy",
year="2014",
author="Banducci, Anne N. and Gomes, Melissa and Macpherson, Laura and Lejuez, Carl W. and Potenza, Marc N. and Gelernter, Joel and Amstadter, Ananda B.",
volume="6",
number="1",
pages="1-7",
abstract="Childhood emotional abuse (CEA) is a pervasive problem associated with negative sequelae such as elevated depressive symptoms. Key stress-related genes, such as the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism, interact with childhood abuse to produce elevated depressive symptoms in older adolescent girls, but not in older adolescent boys. To date, studies have not examined this relationship as a function of CEA specifically or among younger adolescents. To extend prior work, we examined the effects of the 5-HTTLPR and CEA on depressive symptoms among 10-12-year-old youth. Based on previous findings, we expected a main effect of CEA on depressive symptoms among all youth, but only expected an interactive effect between the 5-HTTLPR and CEA on depressive symptoms in girls. In the current study, 222 youth (mean age 11.02 years, 44.1% girls, 51.6% Caucasian, 33.0% African American, 2.7% Latino, and 12.7% other) and their parent(s)/guardian(s) completed the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale and the Emotional Abuse subscale of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and provided saliva samples for genotyping the 5-HTTLPR. Results indicate that CEA, but not the 5-HTTLPR, was related to elevated depressive symptoms among boys. Among girls, each copy of the s allele of the 5-HTTLPR was related to increased depressive symptoms, but only for those who had experienced CEA. Our results extend prior findings by specifically examining CEA and by focusing on 10-12-year-old youth. These results, although preliminary, suggest that focusing on the interplay between putative genetic markers and a broader range of environmental events, such as CEA, might allow researchers to determine factors differentially influencing the later emergence of sex differences in depressive symptoms.<p />",
language="en",
issn="1942-9681",
doi="10.1037/a0031121",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0031121"
}