In keeping with previous findings we found genetic effects of 5-HTTLPR in both anxiety and depression in the predicted direction, namely s allele being a risk variant (Table E in S1 File). What is more intriguing, is that we replicated a direct association between 5-HTTLPR and anxiety [3,34,35] and a 5-HTTLPRxRLE interaction in lifetime and current BSI-depression [10,18] in a large non-clinical population sample. In addition, we found that anxiety partially mediates the effect of the 5-HTTLPRxRLE interaction on the emergence of depression, as was previously hypothesized [36]. These findings may shed new light on the complex and multilevel relationship between different manifestations of increased vulnerability related to 5-HTTLPR as well as on the relationship between anxious and depressive symptomatology and morbidity. Clinically there is an extensive correlation between anxiety and depression, reflected not only in the frequent comorbidity between the two conditions but also in the clinical entity of mixed anxiety and depression in ICD-10, and the shared genetic risk factors between these two phenomena [2,14]. Our results suggest that 5-HTTLPR is one of the shared genetic factors. However,
