Abstract
ObjectivePsychotic experiences occur at a much greater prevalence in the population than psychotic disorders. There has been little research to date, however, on genetic risk for this extended psychosis phenotype. We examined whether COMT or BDNF genotypes were associated with psychotic experiences or interacted with childhood trauma in predicting psychotic experiences.MethodPsychiatric interviews and genotyping for COMT-Val158Met and BDNF-Val66Met were carried out on two population-based samples of 237 individuals aged 11-15 years. Logistic regression was used to examine for main effects by genotype and childhood trauma, controlling for important covariates. This was then compared to a model with a term for interaction between genotype and childhood trauma. Where a possible interaction was detected, this was further explored in stratified analyses.ResultsWhile childhood trauma showed a borderline association with psychotic experiences, COMT-Val158Met and BDNF-Val66Met genotypes were not directly associated with psychotic experiences in the population. Testing for gene x environment interaction was borderline significant in the case of COMT-Val158Met with individuals with the COMT-Val158Met Val-Val genotype, who had been exposed to childhood trauma borderline significantly more likely to report psychotic experiences than those with Val-Met or Met-Met genotypes. There was no similar interaction by BDNF-Val66Met genotype.ConclusionThe COMT-Val158Met Val-Val genotype may be a genetic moderator of risk for psychotic experiences in individuals exposed to childhood traumatic experiences.
Highlights
Much research has established that psychotic experiences have a higher prevalence in the general population than psychotic disorders [1,2,3,4]
The COMT-Val158Met Val-Val genotype may be a genetic moderator of risk for psychotic experiences in individuals exposed to childhood traumatic experiences
We previously suggested that genes for psychosis may, be genes for the broader ‘extended psychosis phenotype’, made up not just of individuals with psychotic disorders and a much larger population of individuals with psychotic experiences [28]
Summary
Much research has established that psychotic experiences have a higher prevalence in the general population than psychotic disorders [1,2,3,4]. Psychotic experiences in adolescence are associated with high risk for severe psychopathology, both in the immediate term and later into adulthood, including both psychotic [6,7,8] and nonpsychotic disorders [9,10,11,12]. Psychotic experiences share many important risk factors with schizophrenia [13]. In the case of familial risk [14], there is covariation of psychotic experiences with maternal schizophrenia-spectrum disorder [15]. In common with psychotic disorders, psychotic experiences are more prevalent in adolescents who have had traumatic experiences, including physical abuse, exposure to domestic violence and unwanted sexual experiences [16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27]
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