14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers found out that children victims of bullying that had differences in the 5-HTTLPR gene developped emotional problems. If a child is more frequently bullied, the emotional response is more intense.
Though bullying is quite common in schools, it should not be tolerated as it can have severe consequences. This year, US state legislators passed some very restrictive anti-bullying laws, that will hopefully decrease the frequency of bullying in schools. Whether this will improve things significantly or not, scientists from Duke University and Kings College London have realized a study that links a genetic variation to emotional problems developed by bullied children.
Children victims of bullying can develop emotional issues leading to depression, and seen in the US media, in more extreme situations can push a child to suicide. Nevertheless, not all bullied children develop these emotional problems. The responsible for this phenomenon is a gene called 5-HTTLPR gene, and more specifically the SS genotype, that presents differences in some children. The study investigating this matter is published in the August 2010 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP) and online at www.jacaap.org.
This research was made on 2,232 same-sex 5 year-old twins, bu Dr Sugden and his colleagues. In 1999-2000, when the children were 5 years old, home visits were made and children were evaluated for emotional problems, according to their mothers and teachers sayings, using the Child Behavior Checklist and the Teacher’s Report Form. The same thing was done when children were 12. Besides the interviews, researchers also collected DNA samples by buccal swabs, in order to investigate genetic variations.
Dr Sudgen and his colleagues state in their article called “The Serotonin Transporter Gene Moderates the Development of Emotional Problems Among Children Following Bullying Victimization”: “This genetic moderation persists after controlling for children’s previctimization emotional problems and for other risk factors shared by children growing up within the same family environment.”
These findings are consistent with research made by Benjet, Thompson and Gotlib in their “5-HTTLPR moderates the effect of relational peer victimization on depressive symptoms in adolescent girls” study. The current article is discussed by Dr. James J. Hudziak and Dr. Stephen V. Faraone in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, that state: “These designs have moved us well beyond the fiery but misguided debates about nature versus nurture. We have learned that both domains affect psychopathology, exerting effects that sometimes act independently of one another and sometimes interactively, as when risk DNA variants make some children more susceptible to the onset of illness. Twin studies show that gene action can be complex, with DNA variants at a gene locus sometimes acting additively (in a dose-response manner) and sometimes with classic dominant or recessive modes of inheritance.”
Dr Sudgen's study was supported by three grants from the UK Medical Research Council and two grants from the National Institutes of Health, according to AlphaGalileo.