Psychiatry Research EG

Objective The aim of the study was to explore psychological and behavioral disturbances in a sample of Egyptian children with depressed parents and investigate the potential role of the short (s) alleles of the serotonin transporter-linked polymorphic region in developing depressive symptoms in both parents and their offspring. Subjects and methods The study included 20 families with depressed parents and their offspring (age 6–18 years), who were compared with 20 control families with healthy parents. The Child Behavior Check List was fi lled by parents for children to detect syndromal and subsyndromal symptoms of mood disorders and other psychiatric disorders in the offspring. Blood samples were drawn from all groups and PCR analysis was conducted to investigate the polymorphism of interest. Results The children of depressed parents scored higher than the children of control parents in almost all Child Behavior Check List internalizing and externalizing problem parameters. A signifi cantly higher percentage of depressed parents (70%) were found to carry the risk allele (s) compared with control parents (35%) (P = 0.03). A similar, but nonsignifi cant, pattern of asymmetric allele distribution was also found among the offspring of the two groups (77.3 vs. 50%). Conclusion Parental depression must be recognized as a major risk factor of psychiatric morbidity in children. Greater emphasis should be placed on developing large-scale effective preventive interventions for families with parental depression. Keywor ds : children, depression, 5-HTTLPR, parental, polymorphism