Our results may be viewed with the following limitations in mind: (a) These analyses were conducted in samples of primarily European descent. This is an advantage in genetic studies where population stratification can confound association signals and there is allelic variation in the frequency of rs1049353 across populations. (b) Retrospective assessments of anhedonia and abuse were used which may be subject to recall bias. Additionally, our measures of anhedonia were drawn from interview sections designed to assess depression – currently, independent questionnaires or laboratory assessments of anhedonia in detail are not available. (c) A majority of the sample that met criteria for MDD reported lifetime anhedonia making the study of non-anhedonic MDD challenging. (d) While this is not a limitation, we used a dichotomous measure of childhood physical abuse in the primary sample and a continuous factor score in the replication sample. As rates of childhood physical abuse were higher in the CATS replication sample, and multiple indices of abuse were available, the factor score provides a more refined characterization of abuse exposure in that sample. It should be noted
