Abstract
Most individuals successfully maintain psychological well-being even when exposed to trauma or adversity. Emotional resilience or the ability to thrive in the face of adversity is determined by complex interactions between genetic makeup, previous exposure to stress, personality, coping style, availability of social support, etc. Recent studies have demonstrated that childhood trauma diminishes resilience in adults and affects mental health. The Dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4) exon III variable number tandem repeat (VNTR) polymorphism was reported to moderate the impact of adverse childhood environment on behaviour, mood and other health-related outcomes. In this study we investigated whether DRD4-exIII-VNTR genotype moderates the effect of childhood adversities (CA) on resilience. In a representative population sample (n = 1148) aged 30–34 years, we observed an interactive effect of DRD4 genotype and CA (β = 0.132; p = 0.003) on resilience despite no main effect of the genotype when effects of age, gender and education were controlled for. The 7-repeat allele appears to protect against the adverse effect of CA since the decline in resilience associated with increased adversity was evident only in individuals without the 7-repeat allele. Resilience was also significantly associated with approach-/avoidance-related personality measures (behavioural inhibition/activation system; BIS/BAS) measures and an interactive effect of DRD4-exIII-VNTR genotype and CA on BAS was observed. Hence it is possible that approach-related personality traits could be mediating the effect of the DRD4 gene and childhood environment interaction on resilience such that when stressors are present, the 7-repeat allele influences the development of personality in a way that provides protection against adverse outcomes.
Highlights
Exposure to stress or trauma, a common life experience, has different individual outcomes ranging from severe post-traumatic psychopathology to successful adaptation with minimal negative impact
The interaction term appeared to be positively associated with CD-RISC suggesting a protective effect of the 7 r allele in the presence of adversity. These results suggest the following: (i) Dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4)-exIII-variable number tandem repeat (VNTR) genotype moderates the effect of childhood adversities (CA), (ii) the presence of one or more 7 r allele was not associated with higher resilience when no adversity was reported and (iii) the 7 r allele appears to be protective against the decrease in resilience that occurs with increasing adversity (Figure 1B)
When Behavioural inhibition system (BIS)/behavioural activation system (BAS) scores were controlled for in the regression analysis, the effect of the [genotype 6 CA] interaction term was no longer significant (Model 2, Table 3). These results suggest that the variance in CD-RISC explained by DRD4-exIII-VNTR genotype by CA interaction might be explained by BIS/BAS scores
Summary
Exposure to stress or trauma, a common life experience, has different individual outcomes ranging from severe post-traumatic psychopathology to successful adaptation with minimal negative impact. Campbell-Sills [4] investigated the effect of demographics and history of childhood adversity (CA) on perceived resilience in the general population using the self-report scale developed by Connor and Davidson (Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale or CD-RISC, [2]) They found that childhood maltreatment alone explained 2% of the variance in resilience in their study sample. Children with the 7 r allele (7r+) are reported to have significantly more externalizing problems, sensation-seeking behaviour and attachment disorganization compared to children without the 7 r allele (7 r2) when exposed to low parenting quality, maternal insensitivity or maternal unresolved loss or trauma [7,8,9,10] They have fewer problems when quality of parenting is high [10], leading to the suggestion that DRD4 is a ‘plasticity gene’ that makes individuals more susceptible to environmental influences, both positive and negative [8]. To best of our knowledge, the effect of DRD4 genotype on adult emotional resilience has not been investigated previously in a large, randomly selected, community-based sample
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