The oxytocin receptor gene predicts brain activity during an emotion recognition task in autism.
Florina Uzefovsky, Richard A I Bethlehem, Simone Shamay-Tsoory and 10 others
PMID 30918622WHAT IT FOUND
Oxytocin receptor gene variants were linked to brain activity during emotion recognition, mostly in controls.
The autism group scored lower on the task, but considering genotype removed that difference. This is exploratory biology, not a therapy finding.
Key findings
01Diagnosis alone did not significantly predict brain activation in any imaging analysis.
02For rs2254298, the interaction between genotype and diagnosis was associated with activation in the right supramarginal gyrus and right inferior parietal lobule, driven by stronger activation in control A-carriers.
03The autism group was less accurate than controls on the emotion recognition task, but that difference disappeared once genotype, sex and age were considered.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The sample was modest, with 38 autism participants and 33 controls, so the findings need replication. The study was exploratory and tested several genotype and brain analyses, so some findings may not hold. Participants were adolescents, and pubertal or developmental stage was not directly assessed. The autism group had no other comorbidities and no current or past medication use, so it may not represent many patients in clinical services. The autism group's lower emotion recognition score disappeared once genotype was considered, so the behavioural difference was not robust. The diagnosis-prediction analysis was exploratory and not a validated clinical test.
Declared interests
Funding was listed from the Israel Science Foundation, British Friends of the Hebrew University, Joseph Levy charitable foundation, UK Medical Research Council, Pinsent Darwin Trust, William Binks Autism Neuroscience Fellowship, Wellcome Trust, Autism Research Trust, and the NIHR Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care East of England at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that oxytocin receptor gene variants can diagnose autism or guide treatment. The diagnosis-prediction analysis was exploratory, the sample was small, and the paper reports brain activity associations rather than tested clinical interventions.