title: Adolescent depression linked to socioeconomic status? Molecular approaches for revealing premorbid risk factors.
abstract: The means by which social environmental exposures influence risk of mental disorders is a persistent and still open question. A key candidate mechanism for the biologic mediation of environmental effects involves epigenetic factors, which regulate gene function without altering underlying DNA sequence. Recent work has shown that environmental exposures such as childhood abuse, family history of mental disorder, and low socioeconomic status (SES) associate with differential DNA methylation (5mC) - a relatively stable, but modifiable, epigenetic factor. However, the longitudinal relation among SES, 5mC, brain function, and risk of depression remains to be elucidated. Here, we briefly review literature relevant to these associations and discuss recent findings that, for the first time, prospectively demonstrate sequential links between low SES, changes in 5mC, changes in brain function, and risk of depression in a cohort of adolescents.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA.
authors.forename: Monica
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Uddin
authors.affiliation: Center for Mental Health, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Rwanda, Kigali, Rwanda.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jansen
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
authors.forename: Eva H
authors.initials: EH
authors.lastname: Telzer
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D019175:DNA Methylation; D003863:Depression / Q000209:etiology*; D044127:Epigenesis, Genetic; D006801:Humans; D012307:Risk Factors; D012923:Social Class
keywords: biomarker; epigenetics; longitudinal study