Wow, they’ve found the(a) depression gene

This is from the July 18, 2003 issue of Science (301; 386-389), but was mentioned on NPR this morning.  The Serotonin Transport gene (5-HTT) has two alleles in humans, short (s) and long (l).  In a longitudinal study of a New Zealand village’s population, those with s were significantly more likely to have major depressive episodes (They were studied at age 26, and the episodes were within the past year, in response to stressful life events from age 21) if they had the s allele.

I can never decipher biological statistics, so I have no clue what the likelihood is.  But here’s what the article had: b = 1.55, SE = 0.66, t = 2.35, P = 0.02 among s/s, b = 1.25, SE = 0.34, t = 3.66, P < 0.001 among s/l).  l/l had b = 0.17, SE = 0.41, t = 0.41, P = 0.68.  Anybody understand any of that?  If you think the article might have information to help you decipher, I can go look it up for you.

That’s the other thing: My bosses let their Science Online subscription lapse.  But they’re such packrats that the hard copy was relatively easy to find, in a stack with all, ALL, their other magazines.

On a slightly different question: The distance-along-a-strand-of-DNA measurement is Morgans, right?

August 24th, 2004 | Owen | 1 Comment »|
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One Response to “Wow, they’ve found the(a) depression gene”

The “distance” is centiMorgans. I’ll look up the article at work and see if I can figure out any of the numbers. It may take a few days . . . work has been insane . . .

ShortSpeedFreak - August 26th, 2004 at 8:05 pm

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