Cristóbal–Narváez P, et al. – The focus of the presented study was to investigate the interaction of relevant SNPs with both early–life adversity and proximal (momentary) stress on psychotic experiences (PEs) in an extended psychosis sample and to examine the differences between early–psychosis and non–clinical groups for these interactions. Findings revealed that individual differences in relevant stress–regulation systems interact with both distal and proximal psychosocial stressors in shaping the daily–life manifestation of PEs across the psychosis continuum.

Methods

• For this study, 242 non-clinical and 96 early-psychosis members were prompted randomly eight times daily for 1 week to complete assessments of current experiences, including PEs and stress.
• Members also reported on childhood trauma and were genotyped for 10 SNPs on COMT, RGS4, BDNF, FKBP5, and OXTR genes.

Results

• Unlike genetic variants, distal and proximal stressors were related to PEs in both samples and were more strongly correlated with PEs in the early-psychosis than in the non-clinical group.
• It was observed in the findings that the RGS4 TA and FKBP5 CATT haplotypes interacted with distal stress, whereas the A allele of OXTR(rs2254298) interacted with proximal stress, increasing momentary levels of PEs in the early-psychosis group.
• According to the findings obtained, no interactions emerged with COMT or BDNF variants.