Gene × Environment Interactions at the Serotonin Transporter Locus

The moderation by the serotonin transporter gene of environmental adversity in the etiology of depression: 2009 update

“…5,6 As these meta-analyses did not take into account methodological heterogeneity and only included a selection of published studies, we have undertaken to update our systematic review to include all relevant studies published up to the end of March 2009 (the same date as in the larger of the two meta-analyses 6 ). The aims were to find out whether the relationship between methodology and results holds for studies published since our 2007 review and explore whether methodological heterogeneity could have confounded the published meta-analyses.…”

G × E interaction and neurodevelopment II. Focus on adversities in paediatric depression: the moderating role of serotonin transporter

“…Even if the functional interpretation of the L G allele has been questioned, some more recent studies used this classification. Three meta-analyses (Munafo et al 2009;Risch et al 2009;Karg et al 2011) and two consecutive reviews of Uher & McGuffin (2008, which include multiple age-ranges, assessing the moderating role of 5-HTTLPR on the relationship between depression and environmental adversities, have shown mixed results. Nevertheless, they were able to identify important study characteristics that influence study outcome, i.e., the stress assessment method and stressor type.…”

Letter to the Editor: Bias in the measurement of bias. Letter regarding ‘Citation bias and selective focus on positive findings in the literature on the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR), life stress and depression’

“…Clearly, this is controversial. On the one hand, there have been two negative meta-analyses that included a small number of reports to use homogeneous designs (k = 5 and 14, respectively; Munafò et al 2009;Risch et al 2009), many G × E investigations are under-powered (Duncan & Keller, 2011), and we observed some questionable research practices as we read. On the other hand, inclusive meta-analyses from Karg et al (2011) (k = 54) and Sharpley et al (2014) (k = 81) both reach positive conclusions, with Sharpley et al (2014) showing that the meta-analytic effect emerges across four separate design subtypes.…”