Candidate SNP associations of optimism and resilience in older adults: exploratory study of 935 community-dwelling adults.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE:

Optimism and resilience promote health and well-being in older adults, and previous reports suggest that these traits are heritable. We examined the association of selected single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with optimism and resilience in older adults.

DESIGN:

Candidate gene association study that was a follow-on at the University of California, San Diego, sites of two NIH-funded multi-site longitudinal investigations: Women's Health Initiative (WHI) and SELenium and vitamin E Cancer prevention Trial (SELECT).

PARTICIPANTS:

426 women from WHI older than age 50 years, and 509 men older than age 55 years (age 50 years for African American men) from SELECT.

MEASUREMENTS:

65 candidate gene SNPs that were judged by consensus, based on a literature review, as being related to predisposition to optimism and resilience, and 31 ancestry informative marker SNPs, genotyped from blood-based DNA samples and self-report scales for trait optimism, resilience, and depressive symptoms.

RESULTS:

Using a Bonferroni threshold for significant association (p = 0.00089), there were no significant associations for individual SNPs with optimism or resilience in single-locus analyses. Exploratory multi-locus polygenic analyses with p <0.05 showed an association of optimism with SNPs in MAOA, IL10, and FGG genes, and an association of resilience with a SNP in MAOA gene.

CONCLUSIONS:

Correcting for Type I errors, there were no significant associations of optimism and resilience with specific gene SNPs in single-locus analyses. Positive psychological traits are likely to be genetically complex, with many loci having small effects contributing to phenotypic variation. Our exploratory multi-locus polygenic analyses suggest that larger sample sizes and complementary approaches involving methods such as sequence-based association studies, copy number variation analyses, and pathway-based analyses could be useful for better understanding the genetic basis of these positive psychological traits.

• Authors: Brinda K Rana, Burcu F Darst, Cinnamon Bloss, Pei-An Betty Shih, Colin Depp, Caroline M Nievergelt, Matthew Allison, J Kellogg Parsons, Nicholas Schork, Dilip V Jeste
• Journal: The American journal of geriatric psychiatry : official journal of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry (Am J Geriatr Psychiatry) Vol. 22 Issue 10 Pg. 997-1006.e5 (Oct 2014) ISSN: 1545-7214 [Electronic] England
• PMID: 24791650 (Publication Type: Journal Article, Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't, Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.)
• Copyright: Copyright © 2014 American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Chemical References

• Fibrinogens, Abnormal
• IL10 protein, human
• fibrinogen gamma'
• Interleukin-10
• Monoamine Oxidase
• monoamine oxidase A, human

Topics

• Aged
• Aged, 80 and over
• Aging (genetics)
• Depression (genetics)
• Female
• Fibrinogens, Abnormal (genetics)
• Genetic Association Studies
• Genotype
• Humans
• Interleukin-10 (genetics)
• Male
• Middle Aged
• Monoamine Oxidase (genetics)
• Multifactorial Inheritance (genetics)
• Personality (genetics)
• Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide (genetics)
• Resilience, Psychological
• White People (genetics)