Aim
Heroin addiction is a chronic, relapsing disease that has genetic and environmental, including drug-induced, contributions. Stress influences the development of addictions. This study was conducted to determine if variants in stress-related genes are associated with opioid dependence (OD). Patients &
Conclusion
This study lends more evidence to previous reports of association of stress-related variants with heroin dependence.
Methods
One hundred and twenty variants in 26 genes were analyzed in 597 Dutch subjects. Patients included 281 OD in methadone maintenance with or without heroin-assisted treatment and 316 controls.
Results
Twelve SNPs in seven genes showed a nominally significant association with OD. Experiment-wise significant associations (p < 0.05) were found for three SNP pairs, through an interaction effect: NPY1R/GAL rs4691910/rs1893679, NPY1R/GAL rs4691910/rs3136541 and GALR1/GAL rs9807208/rs3136541.