Interaction between oxytocin genotypes and early experience predicts quality of mothering and postpartum mood

Viara Mileva-Seitz, Meir Steiner, Leslie Atkinson, Michael J Meaney, Robert Levitan, James L Kennedy, Marla B Sokolowski, Alison S Fleming, Viara Mileva-Seitz, Meir Steiner, Leslie Atkinson, Michael J Meaney, Robert Levitan, James L Kennedy, Marla B Sokolowski, Alison S Fleming

Abstract

Individual differences in maternal behavior are affected by both early life experiences and oxytocin, but little is known about genetic variation in oxytocin genes and its effects on mothering. We examined two polymorphisms in the oxytocin peptide gene OXT (rs2740210 and rs4813627) and one polymorphism in the oxytocin receptor gene OXTR (rs237885) in 187 Caucasian mothers at six months postpartum. For OXT, both rs2740210 and rs4813627 significantly associated with maternal vocalizing to the infant. These polymorphisms also interacted with the quality of care mothers experienced in early life, to predict variation in maternal instrumental care and postpartum depression. However, postpartum depression did not mediate the gene-environment effects of the OXT SNPs on instrumental care. In contrast, the OXTR SNP rs237885 did not associate with maternal behavior, but it did associate with pre-natal (but not post-natal) depression score. The findings illustrate the importance of variation in oxytocin genes, both alone and in interaction with early environment, as predictors of individual differences in human mothering. Furthermore, depression does not appear to have a causal role on the variation we report in instrumental care. This suggests that variation in instrumental care varies in association with a gene-early environment effect regardless of current depressive symptomatology. Finally, our findings highlight the importance of examining multiple dimensions of human maternal behavior in studies of genetic associations.

Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1. Main effects of OXT genotype…
Figure 1. Main effects of OXT genotype on infant-directed vocalizing.
Mothers with C/C and G/G genotypes for rs2740210 and rs4813627, respectively, vocalize significantly longer to their infants; values plotted represent non-imputed values of the original sample; regression coefficients and statistics presented here and in the text are based on multiply imputed values for maternal outcomes (see Methods); ***p

Figure 2. Interaction between OXT genotypes (rs2740210…

Figure 2. Interaction between OXT genotypes (rs2740210 and rs4813627) and maternal self-reported early care quality…

Figure 2. Interaction between OXT genotypes (rs2740210 and rs4813627) and maternal self-reported early care quality (factor derived from multiple early experience measures, see Methods) on (A) duration of instrumental care during a 20 minute maternal-infant recorded interaction and (B) depression score assessed with the CES-D depressioni scale at 6 months postpartum.
Figures do not take into account covariates used in analyses (Tables 3 and 4).

Figure 3. Path models depicting relationships between…

Figure 3. Path models depicting relationships between early experience, postnatal depression, and maternal instrumental care…

Figure 3. Path models depicting relationships between early experience, postnatal depression, and maternal instrumental care in two genotypes of rs2740210: C/C and A/C+A/A using coefficients from Table 6 .
Significance values are based on bias-corrected bootstrap adjusted confidence intervals. Postnatal depression is not a significant mediator of the early care quality associations with instrumental care, for either genotype.
Figure 2. Interaction between OXT genotypes (rs2740210…
Figure 2. Interaction between OXT genotypes (rs2740210 and rs4813627) and maternal self-reported early care quality (factor derived from multiple early experience measures, see Methods) on (A) duration of instrumental care during a 20 minute maternal-infant recorded interaction and (B) depression score assessed with the CES-D depressioni scale at 6 months postpartum.
Figures do not take into account covariates used in analyses (Tables 3 and 4).
Figure 3. Path models depicting relationships between…
Figure 3. Path models depicting relationships between early experience, postnatal depression, and maternal instrumental care in two genotypes of rs2740210: C/C and A/C+A/A using coefficients from Table 6 .
Significance values are based on bias-corrected bootstrap adjusted confidence intervals. Postnatal depression is not a significant mediator of the early care quality associations with instrumental care, for either genotype.

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