In one of our previous posts, we wrote about the Helsinki Birth Cohort – one of the cohorts Developmental Psychology group is working with – which includes information about men and women who were separated temporarily from their biological parents in childhood due to evacuation to Sweden or Denmark from the strains of World War II. In that post, we shared findings from the study by Jari Lahti and colleagues, who found that variants of the FKBP5 gene interacted with this objectively recorded early life stress in predicting moderate to severe levels of depressive symptoms in midlife.
Recently, Anna Suarez and colleagues extended these findings further in a paper published in Psychosomatic Medicine journal by exploring whether FKBP5 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) interacted with early separation from parents on physical health, namely on type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and quantitative glycemic traits.
FKBP5 gene plays an important role in regulating our stress reaction system – the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis). Dozens of studies have found that variants, or SNPs, of this gene interact with stress experienced early in life (e.g. neglect, abuse, or separation from parents) in predicting mental health problems in adulthood. This means that people who share the same stressful childhood experience but have different versions of FKBP5 gene, have different probability of developing psychiatric problems that are related to dysregulation of the HPA axis.
The study by Suarez and colleagues shows a similar effect for physical health: those who were separated from parents during war and had at least one “vulnerable” copy of the FKBP5 SNPs (rs1360780, rs9394309, rs9470080) had higher levels of blood glucose when measured with oral glucose tolerance test. While there was no significant interaction of FKBP5 and early life stress on type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, high levels of glucose predict increased risk of developing these conditions in the future. As Depsy continues to follow-up the participants from Helsinki Birth Cohort, future studies will tell if the increased risk in the genetically vulnerable individuals exposed to early life stress will translate into manifest disease as the participants of the cohort age.
Awareness of vulnerability to certain conditions based on genetic makeup and childhood experience pose a great potential for timely prediction and prevention.
/ Anna Suarez