Citation

Tomasi J, Zai CC, Zai G, Herbert D, King N, Freeman N, Kennedy JL, Tiwari AK. J. Psychiatr. Res. 2020; 125: 144-151.

Affiliation

Molecular Brain Science Department, Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Toronto, ON, Canada; Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada. Electronic address: Arun.Tiwari@camh.ca.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.jpsychires.2020.03.019

PMID

32289651

Abstract

Given the limited effectiveness of treatments for pathological anxiety, there is a pressing need to identify genetic markers that can aid the precise selection of treatments and optimize treatment response. Anxiety and startle response levels demonstrate a direct relationship, and previous literature suggests that exaggerated startle reactivity may serve as an endophenotype of pathological anxiety. In addition, genetic variants related to startle reactivity may play a role in the etiology of pathological anxiety. In the current study, we selected 22 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) related to startle reactivity in the literature, and examined their association with anxiety symptom severity across psychiatric disorders (n = 508), and in a subset of patients with an anxiety disorder (n = 298). Overall, none of the SNPs pass correction for multiple independent tests. However, across psychiatric patients, rs6323 from the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene and rs324981 from the neuropeptide S receptor 1 (NPSR1) gene were nominally associated with baseline anxiety symptom severity (p = 0.017, 0.023). These preliminary findings provide support for investigating startle-related genetic variants to identify biomarkers of anxiety symptom severity.

Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Anxiety; Endophenotypes; Genetics; Single nucleotide polymorphisms; Startle response