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The effect of childhood trauma and trauma-focused psychotherapy on blood expression of MED22 in patients with major depressive disorder

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2022

A. Minelli*
Affiliation:
University of Brescia, Department Of Molecular And Translational Medicine, Brescia, Italy
E. Maffioletti
Affiliation:
University of Brescia, Department Of Molecular And Translational Medicine, Verona, Italy
R. Carvalho Silva
Affiliation:
University of Brescia, Department Of Molecular And Translational Medicine, Verona, Italy
A. Cattaneo
Affiliation:
IRCCS Fatebenefratelli San Giovanni di Dio, Biological Psychiatry Unit, Brescia, Italy
G. Perusi
Affiliation:
Psychiatric Hospital, Villa Santa Chiara, Verona, Italy
M. Bortolomasi
Affiliation:
Psychiatric Hospital, Villa Santa Chiara, Verona, Italy
M. Gennarelli
Affiliation:
University of Brescia, Department Of Molecular And Translational Medicine, Verona, Italy
*
*Corresponding author.

Abstract

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Introduction

The only available genome-wide study (Minelli et al., 2018) indicated an association between the neglect CT and MED22, a transcriptional factor gene.

Objectives

To verify how the dysregulation of MED22 could be affected by environmental and genetic factors, we carried out an analysis on these components and a longitudinal study concerning the effect of trauma-focused psychotherapy in MDD patients that experienced CT.

Methods

On a large mRNA sequencing dataset including 368 MDD patients we computed the genetic (GReX) and the environmental (EReX) components affecting gene expression in relation to CT. Furthermore, we measured the expression of MED22 in 22 MDD patients treated with trauma-focused psychotherapy.

Results

The dissection of MED22 expression profiles revealed an association of neglect with environmental and genetic components (p=6x10-3 p=2.6x10-4). Furthermore, in an independent cohort of 177 controls, we also observed a significant association between cis-eSNPs of MED22 and higher neuroticism scores (best p-value: 0.00848) that are usually associated with a decreased amount of resilience to stress events. Finally, the results of psychotherapy revealed a reduction of depressive symptomatology (p<0.001) and 73% of patients resulted responders at the follow-up visit. MED22 expression during psychotherapy showed a change trend (p=0.057) with an interaction effect with response (p=0.035). Responder and non-responder patients showed MED22 expression differences at different trauma-focused psychotherapy timepoints (p=0.15; p=0.012) and at the follow-up (p=0.021).

Conclusions

Our results provide insights suggesting that some biological and clinical consequences of CT depend on genetic background and environmental factors that could induce vulnerability or resilience to stressful life events.

Disclosure

No significant relationships.

Type
Abstract
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Psychiatric Association
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