TY - JOUR A1 - Weber, Heike A1 - Scholz, Claus Jürgen A1 - Domschke, Katharina A1 - Baumann, Christian A1 - Klauke, Benedikt A1 - Jacob, Christian P. A1 - Maier, Wolfgang A1 - Fritze, Jürgen A1 - Bandelow, Borwin A1 - Zwanzger, Peter Michael A1 - Lang, Thomas A1 - Fehm, Lydia A1 - Ströhle, Andreas A1 - Hamm, Alfons A1 - Gerlach, Alexander L. A1 - Alpers, Georg W. A1 - Kircher, Tilo A1 - Wittchen, Hans-Ulrich A1 - Arolt, Volker A1 - Pauli, Paul A1 - Deckert, Jürgen A1 - Reif, Andreas T1 - Gender Differences in Associations of Glutamate Decarboxylase 1 Gene (GAD1) Variants with Panic Disorder N2 - Background: Panic disorder is common (5% prevalence) and females are twice as likely to be affected as males. The heritable component of panic disorder is estimated at 48%. Glutamic acid dehydrogenase GAD1, the key enzyme for the synthesis of the inhibitory and anxiolytic neurotransmitter GABA, is supposed to influence various mental disorders, including mood and anxiety disorders. In a recent association study in depression, which is highly comorbid with panic disorder, GAD1 risk allele associations were restricted to females. Methodology/Principal Findings: Nineteen single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) tagging the common variation in GAD1 were genotyped in two independent gender and age matched case-control samples (discovery sample n = 478; replication sample n = 584). Thirteen SNPs passed quality control and were examined for gender-specific enrichment of risk alleles associated with panic disorder by using logistic regression including a genotype6gender interaction term. The latter was found to be nominally significant for four SNPs (rs1978340, rs3762555, rs3749034, rs2241165) in the discovery sample; of note, the respective minor/risk alleles were associated with panic disorder only in females. These findings were not confirmed in the replication sample; however, the genotype6gender interaction of rs3749034 remained significant in the combined sample. Furthermore, this polymorphism showed a nominally significant association with the Agoraphobic Cognitions Questionnaire sum score. Conclusions/Significance: The present study represents the first systematic evaluation of gender-specific enrichment of risk alleles of the common SNP variation in the panic disorder candidate gene GAD1. Our tentative results provide a possible explanation for the higher susceptibility of females to panic disorder. KW - Medizin Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-75830 ER -