New study links gene variant with depression
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People who possess a certain gene variant may be at higher risk of developing depression in later life, a new study suggests.
The work was carried out by Rosanna Scott, a PhD student at the University of Central Florida, and is published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.
As part of her thesis, Scott examined what potential role the gene variant ApoE4 may play in the development of depression. The gene ApoE codes for apolipoprotein E, one of the major cholesterol carriers in the brain. However a variant of this gene, ApoE4, has been linked with an increased level of cholesterol.
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Scott found that people who carried this variant were more likely to report depressive symptoms as they aged. She used data from 3,203 participants, aged between 53 and 71 years of age, from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, which analyses long-term factors such as health and relationships of people who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957.
The reason for ApoE4’s influence on depression may be as an indirect result of its effect on cholesterol. Previous studies have shown that factors such as increased cholesterol and high blood sugar can affect how blood and nutrients are carried around the body and brain – potentially influencing mood and inducing depressive symptoms.
The ApoE4 gene variant is thought to be carried by approximately a quarter of the population. The good news? Just because you might carry it, doesn’t mean you’ll definitely develop depression, as Daniel Paulson, associate professor of psychology and co-author of the study, says.
“Some genes are deterministic,” he stated. “Like the one that causes Huntington’s disease, where if you’ve got it, you’ll get the disease. This isn’t one of those genes.”
“Bottom line, you do statistically have a higher risk of developing depression if you have ApoE4,” said Scott, “but it’s not deterministic. You can’t change your genes, but you do have some control over improving your health. That should be encouraging.”
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