Helsinki Birth Cohort Study provides proof of the FKBP5-stress interaction

“Evidence mounting for gene-by-environment interactions at the FKBP5 locus predicting psychiatric symptoms”, Thorhildur Haldorsdottir entitled her commentary in the December issue of Biological Psychiatry.

Haldorsdottir’s commentary was inspired by our recent study findings from the Helsinki Birth Cohort Study that were published in the same issue of Biological Psychiatry. In this article, Jari Lahti and colleagues exploited the circumstances that took place during World War II in Finland. These circumstances have given rise to a unique and objectively recorded early-life stress exposure: namely, early life stress that related to separation from biological parents in the childhood period and to temporary foster care (in families or institutions) abroad.

© Sveriges Järnvägs museum www.samlingsportalen.se
Finnish war evacuee children arriving in Sweden© Sveriges Järnvägs museum www.samlingsportalen.se

During World War II, nearly 80.000 Finnish children of varying ages and socioeconomic backgrounds were evacuated unaccompanied by their biological parents mainly to Sweden, but also to Denmark and Norway, to escape the strains of war.

Already some time ago, researchers in our DEPSY group went through the Finnish National Archives Registry. Of the 13.345 Helsinki Birth Cohort Study participants, 1.781 were identified to have been exposed to this type of early life stress at an average age of 5 years, for an average duration of 2 years. A series of our previous studies have demonstrated that as adults those exposed to this objectively recorded type of early life stress show a range of adverse health and other outcomes: increased risk of cardiometabolic and psychiatric disorders in later life, physiological feedback systems that are more attuned to psychosocial stress in midlife, and lower socioeconomic positions over the entire lifespan. Our further studies also show alterations in reproductive traits over the entire lifespan, and poorer neurocognitive functioning in early and late adulthood.

The new study by Lahti and colleagues demonstrate that FKBP5 polymorphisms (i.e., rs1360780, rs9470080, and rs9394309) and this objectively recorded early life stress interacted in predicting moderate to severe levels of depressive symptoms in midlife.

Depressive symptoms levels were consistently higher in those exposed to early life stress who carried one or two rare alleles of these three selected polymorphisms.

© Sveriges Järnvägs museum www.samlingsportalen.se
Finnish child war evacuees boarding the train to Sweden© Sveriges Järnvägs museum www.samlingsportalen.se

Haldorsdottir concludes in her commentary that “Despite the recent progress toward understanding this FKBP5-stress interaction, there are many questions that remain unanswered and ample room for future progress. Namely, further studies are needed to elucidate potential moderation effects of FKBP5 based on the type, timing, and duration of the environmental stressors and biological sex. A greater in-depth understanding of this interaction may ultimately translate into early detection of individuals at risk of developing a psychiatric disorder and guided preventative and treatment strategies to avoid the long-term negative effects of environmental stressors.” While our study moves beyond previous studies and provides further proof of the FKBP5-stress interaction, we couldn’t agree more with the Haldorsdottir’s conclusion.

/Katri Räikkönen

Meilahti, here we come!

The little ones are counting the days to the arrival of Santa. The DePsy group is counting the days to our move from Siltavuori to the Meilahti campus. In less than 20 days – starting from January 2017 – Psychology at the University of Helsinki will be part of the Medical Faculty. Our physical move into the Meilahti campus and Haartman Institute (H3) is scheduled to take place in the fall of the forthcoming year. Our research laboratories will move a bit later – but no later than early 2018.

siltavuorenpenger_minerva-talo_photohelsinginyliopisto
Old home: Siltavuorenpenger

For over 10 years, Psychology was part of the Faculty of Behavioral Sciences, and before that we were part of the Faculty of Arts. While we enthusiastically look forward to moving into our new home base, we will of course miss our own old faculty, our Jugend-style brick building, and many colleagues who won’t be joining us. DePsy group has many fond memories of the times as part of the Faculty of Behavioral Sciences – countless hours at our desks, written manuscripts, grants, dozens of publications, first accepted publications on the path towards a PhD, PhD defenses, and studies planned and conducted at the Siltavuori Psychologicum premises.

Many may wonder why Psychology is making this move and why now. Many, however, think that this is an excellent step forward. Psychologists themselves took the first initiative. This initiative was inspired by the profiling action of psychological and philosophical sciences in Finland that was undertaken by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture last year. Psychology in Helsinki is heavily leaning towards life sciences. Hence, the hop to Medical Faculty seems very natural. It strengthens our already existing profile in behavioral life sciences and integrates training of health care professionals into one single unit. There certainly exist many pros – and very few cons.

New home: Haartman institute, Meilahti
(photo: Veikko Somerpuro)

DePsy will continue fruitful research collaboration with old friends in the Medical Faculty and hospitals of the Helsinki and Uusimaa Hospital District, and in the other universities and hospital in Finland. DePsy also welcomes new collaborations and collaborators on board. At the same time, DePsy wishes to thank the Faculty of Behavioural Sciences and wishes the best of luck to colleagues in Educational Sciences – Yet, we wish to point out that we are still physically very close to each other– only a 15-minute tram ride from Siltavuori to Meilahti.

DePsy also wishes to thank the international and national collaborators of contributions during the year of 2016 – the journey has been, and continues to be, very exciting. Most of all, however: if we didn’t have the  dedicated pregnant moms, dads, newborns, toddlers, children, adolescents, their parents, caregivers, kindergarten and school teachers, katrir2young and middle-aged adults, and the elderly participating in our studies, none of the research that we do would be possible. Thank You All! DePsy whishes You All a Happy Holiday Season and a prosperous New Year!

/Katri Räikkönen

Katri Savolainen’s defence

Katri Savolainen from the Developmental Psychology Group is defending her PhD thesis Stress and cellular aging – Associations between stress-related factors and leukocyte telomere length this Wednesday.

katris2
Katri Savolainen

It’s well established that stress can be harmful for one’s health, but the mechanisms linking stress with disease and early mortality are not fully understood. Katri worked on the Helsinki Birth Cohort Study, which comprises the 13,345 individuals born from 1934 to 1944 in Helsinki, Finland. Of this cohort, a random sample were invited to a clinical visit some ten years ago. These participants gave a blood sample, and from those blood cells we were able to study telomere length: the length of those bits of DNA which can be found at the end of chromosomes, that get shorter as the cell divides and seem associated with many aging-related diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, stroke, and type 2 diabetes. It’s been suggested previously that stress could link to these illnesses through shortened telomere length.

In her thesis, Katri was able to show that contrary to what one would expect, personality dimensions, mental disorders, depressive symptoms, traumatic life events or stress reactivity – the way your individual hormonal system responds to a stressful situation – were largely unrelated to telomere length. However, those individuals who suffered the double burden of traumatic experience both early and later on in life, and those who had sleep apnea, did on average show shorter telomere length. In conclusion, it would seem that this wide array of stress-related factors are not associated with telomere length.

Read more about Katri’s research in Finnish, have a look at her thesis online, or come watch Katri defend her thesis on November 16th, at noon, at the University of Helsinki main building, lecture room 12 (Fabianinkatu 33)!

/Sara Sammallahti

Sleep Helsinki in Nyt

Sleep Helsinki! in Nyt:

Tässä kuussa 7 500 helsinkiläisnuorta saa kirjeen. Se on kutsu unitutkimukseen, jollaista ei ole koskaan ennen yritetty…

Posted by Nyt on Thursday, 13 October 2016

Is it in our DNA?

dnathekirbster
Image by Kirbster/Flickr

I would like to think the old “nature versus nurture” dispute is pretty much dead and buried in psychology. Instead, we are now trying to understand how nature AND nurture – our genetic material and our environment – together both shape us into who we are.

One way to look at the genetics of psychological traits is to do a genome-wide association study, or GWAS for short.

To put it simply, a GWAS is a study where we try to find out whether a specific trait (such as the risk of a certain disease, or a certain psychological trait) is associated with genetic variants – differences in our DNA.

These are usually huge international projects, where dozens of researchers combine data from tens or hundreds of thousands of people. Our group has also participated in some fascinating GWAS projects.

This year, we took part in showing how

  • well-being, depressive symptoms, and neuroticism are associated with genetic variants (Okbay et al, Nature Genetics 2016)
  • educational attainment, while mostly environmentally determined, is associated with genetic variants – and these genetic differences could affect, for example, our development during the fetal period (Okbay et. al, Nature 2016)
  • a huge number of genetic differences may each play a small part in explaining why some people are more extroverted than others (van den Berg et. al, Behavior Genetics 2016)

What an exciting time to do psychological research!

/Sara Sammallahti

Predo study profile is out

The Prediction and Prevention of Preeclampsia and Intrauterine Growth Restriction (PREDO) study cohort profile is now published in the International Journal of Epidemiology!

Predo is one of the big projects we have going on now. In total, 4,785 pregnant women participated in this study, predowhich includes a clinical trial and a longitudinal cohort study to identify and prevent the risk factors for preeclampsia and intrauterine growth restriction, and to study their transgenerational consequences. Predo combines biomarker data from repeated samples with genomic and epigenomic information and measures of medical, psychological, environmental and socio-demographic characteristics in pregnant women, their partners and their children.

Right now, we’re inviting the school-age children and their parents to participate in the next follow-up phase – for more info in Finnish, visit the Predo site.

/Sara Sammallahti

New site!

licorice_truckTime for a new website for the Developmental Psychology Research Group! We have so much going on with our various projects, we thought it would be about time we updated our website. Hope you enjoy!