Interactive effects of BDNF Val66Met genotype and trauma on limbic brain anatomy in childhood.

ABSTRACT: Childhood trauma is a major precipitating factor in psychiatric disease. Emerging data suggest that stress susceptibility is genetically determined, and that risk is mediated by changes in limbic brain circuitry. There is a need to identify markers of disease vulnerability, and it is critical that these markers be investigated in childhood and adolescence, a time when neural networks are particularly malleable and when psychiatric disorders frequently emerge. In this preliminary study, we evaluated whether a common variant in the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene (Val66Met; rs6265) interacts with childhood trauma to predict limbic gray matter volume in a sample of 55 youth high in sociodemographic risk. We found trauma-by-BDNF interactions in the right subcallosal area and righ

SUBMITTER: Marusak HA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4760899 | biostudies-literature | 2016 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature