Clinical Study Association between Neurocognitive Impairment and the Short Allele of the 5-HTT Promoter Polymorphism in Depression: A Pilot Study

Copyright © 2013 Hely Kalska et al. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Depression has been shown to be associated with cognitive de�cits in various cognitive domains. However, it is still unclear which factors contribute to cognitive impairment. e objective of this study was to �nd out whether a functional polymorphism in the promoter region of the serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) gene is associated with the impairment of cognitive functioning among depressed patients. In a pilot study, a sample of 19 patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and 19 healthy controls was investigated with an extensive psychiatric and neuropsychological examination. All participants were genotyped for 5-HTTLPR. Depressed patients with the short allele of the 5-HTT promoter region exhibited inferior cognitive performance compared to patients with the long allele polymorphism. In healthy controls, no association between genotype and cognitive performance was found.e result suggests that inMDDpatients with the short allele of the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism the vulnerability to cognitive impairment is increased compared to MDD patients without the short allele inheritance. ese preliminary �ndings need to b