TY - JOUR PY - 2009// TI - Epigenetic regulation of the glucocorticoid receptor in human brain associates with childhood abuse JO - Nature neuroscience A1 - D'Alessio, Ana C. A1 - Sasaki, Aya A1 - McGowan, Patrick O. A1 - Meaney, Michael J. A1 - Turecki, Gustavo A1 - Szyf, Moshe A1 - Labonté, Benoit A1 - Dymov, Sergiy SP - 342 EP - 348 VL - 12 IS - 3 N2 - Maternal care influences hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) function in the rat through epigenetic programming of glucocorticoid receptor expression. In humans, childhood abuse alters HPA stress responses and increases the risk of suicide. We examined epigenetic differences in a neuron-specific glucocorticoid receptor (NR3C1) promoter between postmortem hippocampus obtained from suicide victims with a history of childhood abuse and those from either suicide victims with no childhood abuse or controls. We found decreased levels of glucocorticoid receptor mRNA, as well as mRNA transcripts bearing the glucocorticoid receptor 1F splice variant and increased cytosine methylation of an NR3C1 promoter. Patch-methylated NR3C1 promoter constructs that mimicked the methylation state in samples from abused suicide victims showed decreased NGFI-A transcription factor binding and NGFI-A-inducible gene transcription. These findings translate previous results from rat to humans and suggest a common effect of parental care on the epigenetic regulation of hippocampal glucocorticoid receptor expression.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 1097-6256 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nn.2270 ID - ref1 ER -