Original articleAnalysis of Association Between the Serotonin Transporter and Antidepressant Response in a Large Clinical Sample
Section snippets
Sample
Of the 4,041 subjects, DNA was obtained from 1,953 subjects as part of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Human Genetics Initiative. The design of STAR*D was to enroll adults experiencing a major depressive episode who exhibited neither an inadequate response nor intolerance to an adequate trial of any of the STAR*D protocol treatments during the current episode. The overall aim of STAR*D (principal investigator, A. John Rush, NIMH Contract N01-MH-90003) was to determine
Results
Of the 1,953 subjects who consented to give DNA, data for 1,914 subjects are described in this report. The 39 samples that were unavailable for genotyping did not differ from the remaining samples in demographic or clinical variables. Using our responder versus nonresponder phenotype (R/NR), 1,660 of the 1,914 samples could be categorized, with 991 responders and 669 nonresponders, for a response rate of 59.7%. We excluded 254 because they did not reach the 6-week treatment threshold. The
Discussion
We failed to detect association between any of the SNPs within the SLC6A4 and antidepressant response phenotype. Our failure to detect association in a large sample is strong evidence against a role for variation in this gene as a factor in response to SSRIs. In our primary phenotype, categorical response versus nonresponse, our results differed with regard to a number of other studies in which associations were found between response and SLC6A4. There may be a number of reasons for this
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