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A case-control association study of 12 candidate genes and attempted suicide in French adolescents

  • Bojan Mirkovic EMAIL logo , David Cohen , Claudine Laurent , Malaika Lasfar , Christophe Marguet and Prsicille Gerardin
Published/Copyright: September 13, 2017
International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health
From the journal International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health Volume 32 Issue 1

Abstract

Background

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for 10–19-year-olds. Evidence has shown that attempted suicide is a complex interplay of genes and environmental factors. In the adult population, possible associations between genetic polymorphisms and suicidal behaviors have been investigated for several genes, most often with inconsistent findings and poor replicability of significant associations. This study aimed to identify gene variants conferring risk for adolescent suicide attempt.

Methods

We selected the genes and variants after an analysis of the literature and a selection of the most significant associations identified. We performed analysis on 22 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 12 genes (COMT, CRHR1, FKBP5, SLC6A4, HTR1B, HTR2A, TPH1, TPH2, BDNF, NTRK2, NOS1 and IL28RA) for association with suicide attempt, hopelessness and impulsivity in an independent sample, composed of 98 adolescent suicide attempters who required hospitalization based on emergency assessments, and 150 healthy volunteers. Quality controls, deviations from the Hardy-Weinberg disequilibrium and statistical tests of association (case/control) were calculated using PLINK. Asymptotic p-values were corrected with the Benjamini-Hochberg method. The level of significance was set to 0.05.

Results

We identified four polymorphisms of interest, rs10868235 (NTRK2), rs1659400 (NTRK2), rs2682826 (NOS1) and rs7305115 (TPH2), with significant associations for suicide attempts or for the quantitative hopelessness or impulsivity phenotypes. However, none of the associations withstand statistical correction tests.

Conclusion

Our results do not support the role of the 22 SNPs selected in suicide attempt or hopelessness and impulsivity in adolescent population. However, the relatively small sample size and the probable effect of gene-gene interaction or gene-environment interaction on suicidal behavior could not be ruled out.

Keywords: adolescent; attempt suicide; genetic association; polymorphisms; SNPs

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Professor Weber of the Clinical Investigation Center (CIC) of the Rouen University Hospital for his work on recruiting the controls, and the ATMO team in Rouen for their help in the recruitment of the suicidal adolescents.

  1. Authors’ contributions: The study was jointly designed by BM and PG. BM organized the collection of data, performed part of the statistical analysis and prepared the first draft. DC has made substantial contributions to the conception, design, analysis and interpretation of data. CL and ML partially participated in the study design and made substantial contributions to the writing of the manuscript, in data analysis and interpretation of the findings. Overall, all authors were involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content and gave final approval of the version to be published. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

  2. Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

  3. Availability of data and materials: As all the participants signed a consent form to participate solely in the current study, the present data will be used exclusively for its purpose by the primary authors/researchers according to ethics.

  4. Ethics approval and consent to participate: The study was approved by the Nord-Ouest I Group Ethics and Medical Research Committee (Rouen University Hospital, Rouen, France) and was conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. The genetic nature of the study was discussed with the adolescents and their parents beforehand. They received oral and written explanations of the objectives of the study. They received no remuneration. A written informed consent was obtained from the adolescents and their parents or their legal guardian before they could participate in the study.

  5. Funding: The study was funded by the Charles Nicolle Hospital and the Haute-Normandie Region, France. The authors report no financial interests in any of the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.

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Supplementary Material

The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/ijamh-2017-0089).

Received: 2017-05-17
Accepted: 2017-07-18
Published Online: 2017-09-13

©2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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https://doi.org/10.1515/ijamh-2017-0089
Keywords for this article
adolescent; attempt suicide; genetic association; polymorphisms; SNPs

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Editorial
  2. Pelvic inflammatory disease: management requires a patient, prudent, prejudice-free provider
  3. A latent class approach to understanding patterns of peer victimization in four low-resource settings
  4. Validity and reliability of insomnia severity index and its correlation with pittsburgh sleep quality index in poor sleepers among Indian university students
  5. Original Articles
  6. Factors affecting oral health determinants in female university students: a cross-sectional survey in Saudi Arabia
  7. Patterns and predictors of disclosure of HIV positive status among youth living with HIV in Ibadan, Nigeria
  8. Teenage pregnancy – a study in São Tomé and Príncipe
  9. A case-control association study of 12 candidate genes and attempted suicide in French adolescents
  10. Characteristics, reasons, behavior and knowledge towards waterpipe smoking in Saudi Arabia
  11. Investigation of the prevalence and causes and of legal abortion of teenage married mothers in Iran
  12. Effect of a brief training program for primigravid adolescents on parenting self-efficacy and mother-infant bonding in the southeast of Iran
  13. Caring for adolescents in Guatemala: provider perspectives
  14. Blunted cortisol reactivity and risky driving in young offenders – a pilot study
  15. Comparing health promotion behaviors of male and female high school students in Southeast of Iran
  16. Sleep disorder prevalence in at-risk adolescents and potential effects of nightmare triad syndrome
  17. Meningococcal ACWY vaccine uptake and awareness among student freshers enrolled at Northern Ireland universities
  18. Seeking sexual health information? Professionals’ novel experiences of the barriers that prevent female adolescents seeking sexual health information
  19. Youth friendly communication in a transition clinic aimed at adolescents with chronic illness
  20. Retraction
  21. Retraction of: Characteristics of sleep habits among adolescents living in the city of Ribeirão Preto (SP)
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