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Allelic variation of serotonin transporter expression is associated with depression in Parkinson's disease

Molecular Psychiatry volume 6, pages 350–352 (2001)Cite this article

Abstract

Idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disorder with prominent motor symptoms. However, depression is common in PD, affecting about 40% of PD patients. Since there is extensive evidence of degeneration of serotonin (5HT) neurons and loss of the 5HT transporter (5HTT) in PD, we assessed whether a functional polymorphism in the promoter of the 5HTT gene (5HTT gene-linked polymorphic region, 5HTTLPR), which determines high or low 5HT uptake, is associated with depressive symptomatology in PD patients. We found that patients with the short allele of the 5HTTLPR had significantly higher scores on the Hamilton Depression Scale. A functional promoter polymorphism of the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene showed no association. Thus, the 5HTTLPR but not the MAOA gene promoter-associated polymorphism may be a risk factor for depression in PD patients, while neither polymorphism increases the risk for development of Parkinson's disease itself.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M Schad and S Jatzke for excellent technical assistance. We thank Dr A Spahn, Statistics and Computing Center of the University of Würzburg, for performing the statistical analysis. This study was supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (German/Israeli Cooperation in Neuroscience, 01 GA 9802/5). The Department of Psychiatry at the University of Würzburg is a ‘National Parkinson Foundation Center of Excellence Research Laboratory’.

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Author notes

  1. R Mössner and A Henneberg: RM and AH contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

    R Mössner, A Schmitt, Y V Syagailo, M Grässle, T Hennig, M Gerlach, P Riederer & K P Lesch

  2. Hospital for Parkinson's Disease, Bad Nauheim, Germany

    A Henneberg

  3. Department of Molecular Genetics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

    R Simantov

Authors
  1. R Mössner
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  2. A Henneberg
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  3. A Schmitt
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  4. Y V Syagailo
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  5. M Grässle
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  6. T Hennig
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  7. R Simantov
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  8. M Gerlach
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  9. P Riederer
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  10. K P Lesch
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Mössner, R., Henneberg, A., Schmitt, A. et al. Allelic variation of serotonin transporter expression is associated with depression in Parkinson's disease. Mol Psychiatry 6, 350–352 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.mp.4000849

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