It is well known that psychosocial stress may considerably influence human behavior and could be a crucial environmental factor increasing the risk to develop psychopathology. Prior evidence from our group suggests that stressful conditions, such as obligatory military training induction, may induce subclinical psychotic experiences and among otherwise healthy young individuals (Stefanis NC et al., 2006).
Further, we have shown that a functional common polymorphism within the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene, which modulates the enzyme’s ability to degrade dopamine in the human brain, moderates stress-induced subclinical psychotic symptoms in young army recruits, indicative of gene-stress interplay (Stefanis NC et al., 2007).
More recently, we extended the above results by investigating the relationship between the aggregate effect of multiple genetic risk loci for schizophrenia (polygenic risk) and personality traits which have been hypothesized to increase schizophrenia proneness, namely schizotypy. Our results from two independent cohorts of young army recruits (>1,500 individuals) demonstrate that army-related psychosocial stress and trait anxiety could trigger schizotypal traits (i.e. perceptual abnormalities, disorganization, paranoid ideation) in young individuals with low polygenic risk for schizophrenia. In addition, increased polygenic predisposition for schizophrenia predicted higher levels of trait anxiety among army recruits. These findings imply that the genetic background and in particular genetic liability for schizophrenia may impact on human personality when experiencing adverse environmental circumstances.
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