Association between 5-HT1B gene polymorphisms and generalized anxiety disorder in the Han Chinese population

To investigate the association between single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs(1)) in the 5-HT1B(2) gene and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD(3)) in the Chinese Han population. The GAD group included 115 Han Chinese subjects, and the control group included 120 age- and sex-matched Han subjects. We identified the SNP as rs130058, which is located in the fourth intron of the 5-HT1B gene, and we applied the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE4) test for further examination of the SNPs. Our results showed that SNP rs130058 was not significantly associated with GAD in this population. Overall, the distribution frequency of the A allele in the GAD cases was lower than that in the controls, although this difference was not significant (62% vs. 58.75%, P > 0.05). We did not observe significant differences for the AA, AT or TT genotype frequencies (36%, 52%, and 12% for the GAD cases; 30.83%, 55.83% and 13.33% for the controls, respectively). However, analysis showed that the AA, AT, and TT genotype frequencies differed between participants with early-onset and late-onset anxiety. Overall, the rs130058 polymorphism is not associated with a reduced risk of GAD in the Chinese Han population, although the genotype results do show an association with early-onset GAD; thus, further study is warranted.