Institute for Sex Research, Sexual Medicine & Forensic Psychiatry, Center for Psychosocial Medicine, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany; Department of Forensic Psychiatry, University Hospital of Psychiatry Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Ulm University, Institute of Psychology and Education, Ulm, Germany.
Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2021 Sep;131:105275. doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2021.105275. Epub 2021 May 26.
Previous studies have linked polymorphisms of the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA uVNTR) and serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR) to individual differences in the expression of psychopathic traits, but findings remain inconsistent. One possible reason is that these studies have treated psychopathy as a unitary construct when there is accumulating evidence that there are variants or subtypes. We used a variable-centered and a person-centered approach by (a) examining putative genetic correlates of psychopathy across individuals and (b) comparing the frequencies of the MAOA uVNTR genotype and 5-HTTLPR/rs25531 haplotype between empirically derived subtypes of psychopathy, respectively. Notably, we included the often neglected rs25531 polymorphism, which is closely connected to the 5-HTTLPR. Based on data from male offenders and community volunteers, structural equation modeling indicated that the 5-HTTLPR/rs25531 haplotype was specifically associated with interpersonal deficits beyond the overarching psychopathy construct. Latent profile analysis revealed four clusters that were labeled non-psychopaths, sociopaths, callous-conning, and psychopaths. The low-activity variant of the 5-HTTLPR/rs25531 haplotype was significantly more frequent in the callous-conning compared to the non-psychopathic subtype. There were no effects for the MAOA uVNTR. The results illustrate that psychopathy should not be treated as a unitary construct but that there are variants with specific profiles of psychopathic traits, and that the 5-HTTLPR/rs25531 haplotype plays a role in the manifestation of interpersonal deficits from a variable-centered as well as from a person-centered view.
先前的研究已经将单胺氧化酶 A（MAOA uVNTR）和血清素转运体基因（5-HTTLPR）的多态性与精神病特质的个体差异联系起来，但研究结果仍然不一致。一个可能的原因是，这些研究将精神病视为一个单一的结构，而实际上有越来越多的证据表明存在变体或亚型。我们使用变量中心和个体中心的方法，通过（a）检查个体之间精神病的潜在遗传相关性，以及（b）分别比较 MAOA uVNTR 基因型和 5-HTTLPR/rs25531 单倍型在精神病经验衍生亚型中的频率，来研究精神病的潜在遗传相关性。值得注意的是，我们包括了经常被忽视的 rs25531 多态性，它与 5-HTTLPR 密切相关。基于男性罪犯和社区志愿者的数据，结构方程模型表明，5-HTTLPR/rs25531 单倍型与超越总体精神病结构的人际缺陷特别相关。潜在剖面分析揭示了四个聚类，分别标记为非精神病患者、反社会者、冷酷欺诈者和精神病患者。在冷酷欺诈者中，5-HTTLPR/rs25531 单倍型的低活性变体明显比非精神病患者亚型更为常见。MAOA uVNTR 没有影响。结果表明，精神病不应被视为一个单一的结构，而是存在具有特定精神病特征的变体，并且 5-HTTLPR/rs25531 单倍型在从变量中心和个体中心的角度来看，在人际缺陷的表现中发挥作用。
