The Interaction of the Oxytocin Receptor Gene and Subtypes of Child Abuse on Social Cognition in Euthymic Patients With Bipolar Disorder Type I

Abstract Background: Most studies on cognitive impairment in Bipolar Disorder (BD) have neglected the role of early stress, despite the high frequency of childhood maltreatment in this clinical group. The aim of this study was to establish a connection between a history of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse in childhood and social cognition (SC) functioning in patients with BD type I in euthymia, and to test a possible moderating effect of the polymorphism rs53576 in the oxytocin receptor (OXTR) gene. Results: We found a high frequency of child abuse, indicating that BD patients who had been victims of physical and emotional abuse as children, and were carriers of the GG genotype at OXTR rs53576, displayed higher social cognition alterations, specifically in an emotion recognition test. Conclusions: The gene-environment interaction study presented here proposes a Differential Susceptibility model of a genetic polymorphism that can be plausibly associated with SC functioning. This evidence might help to identify at-risk clinical subgroups within a diagnostic category with well-established intra-group heterogeneity such as BD. Future research aimed at testing the inter-level impact of early stress constitutes an ethical-clinical duty in light of the high rates of childhood abuse reported in bipolar patients.