Mu opioid receptor polymorphism, early social adversity, and social traits

ABSTRACT

A polymorphism in the mu opioid receptor gene OPRM1 (rs1799971) has been investigated for its role in sensitivity to social contexts. Evidence suggests that the G allele of this polymorphism is associated with higher levels of sensitivity. This study tested for main effects of the polymorphism and its interaction with a self-report measure of childhood adversity as an index of negative environment. Outcomes were several personality measures relevant to social connection. Significant interactions were obtained, such that the negative impact of childhood adversity on personality was greater among G carriers than among A homozygotes on measures of agreeableness, interdependence, anger proneness, hostility, authentic pride, life engagement, and an index of (mostly negative) feelings coloring one’s world view. Findings support the role of OPRM1 in sensitivity to negative environments. Limitations are noted, including the lack of a measure of advantageous social environment to assess sensitivity to positive social contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• OPRM1
• mu opioid receptor gene
• rs1799971
• A118G
• Asn40Asp
• social traits

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

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Notes

1. Although skew on risk was not extreme, four participants were identified as outliers by the criteria suggested by Grubbs (1969). Results of sensitivity analyses omitting those participants (Thabane et al., 2013) did not differ materially from the results using the complete sample, which are reported here.

2. Gender and ethnicity had significant main effects in some of the analyses, but because our focus here is on the polymorphism and its interaction with childhood adversity, the effects of these control variables are not addressed further here, nor are main effects of childhood adversity (full results are provided in Supplementary material).

3. Because of concerns about effects of the mixed ethnicity of the sample, further tests were conducted incorporating an ethnicity by gene interaction. These yielded no instance in which that interaction approached significance; in all instances except for the borderline screener the original effect was maintained.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by seed funds from the University of Miami.