RESEARCH ARTICLE Influence of Serotonin Transporter Gene Polymorphisms and Adverse Life Events on Depressive Symptoms in the Elderly: A Population-Based Study

Background Depression is common in the elderly. The role of genetic and environmental factors in mod-ulating depressive symptoms is not clear. Methods We evaluated the influence of serotonin transporter gene polymorphisms and recent adverse life events on depressive symptoms in an elderly Italian population. We used data from “InveCe.Ab”, a population-based study of 1321 subjects aged 70–74 years. We used the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) to assess depressive symptoms–a GDS score5 points (GDS5) indicated the presence of clinically relevant symptoms–and per-formed 5-HTTLPR and rs25531 genotyping to obtain the triallelic polymorphism of the sero-tonin transporter. We used the Geriatric Adverse Life Events Scale to measure adverse life events, and logistic regression models to evaluate the role of genotype and recent adverse life events in depressive symptoms, controlling for potential confounders and independent predictors