Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Effects Of Early Life Stress On Anhedonia And Striatal Dopamine Concentration Depends On Variation In Catechol-O-Methyltransferase (Comt) Genotype, Sally Lauren Cole

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Depression is a serious, costly, and heterogeneous disorder for which no one genetic determinant has been identified. Research has shown that stress, and subsequent hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis dysregulation, is a significant predictor of depression, and one particular stressor that has been linked to vulnerability to depression and HPA axis dysregulation is early life trauma. Due to the heterogeneity and complexity of depression, it is likely that specific gene-environment interactions play a role in the development of depression. Interaction between catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) Val¹⁵⁸Met variants with specific environmental factors can potentially increase vulnerability to depression. The present proposed experiment …