SEROTONIN TRANSPORTER (5-HTT) GENE AND BIPOLAR AFFECTIVE-DISORDER

Interactions with antidepressants, as well as other biochemical eviden ce, implicate the serotonin transporter 5-HTT in the etiology of affec tive disorders, However, genetic studies have produced conflicting res ults concerning an association of 5-HTT with bipolar disorder, We exam ined a variable number tandem repeat in the regulatory region of this gene to investigate the possible contribution of 5-HTT to bipolar diso rder susceptibility in a 22-pedigree series, By affected-sib-pair anal ysis and the transmission/disequilibrium test, me found no significant linkage or association of 5-HTT to bipolar disorder, During the cours e of this study, we adapted a PCR technique designed to amplify long t emplates to replicating long GC stretches with complex structure, We a lso refined the location of 5-HTT by radiation hybrid mapping, placing the locus between D17S1294 and SHGC11022 on 17q11.2. (C) 1998 Wiley-L iss, Inc.