of symptoms related social problems and autism in childhood (as well as an decreased ability to bond to a partner in adulthood) and the minor allele (the A-allele). Although not making the reverse direction of association between studies less puzzling this phenomenon is rather common in genetic studies of complex traits, and may be explained by variations in study populations, such as differences in ethnicity and measures of social behaviors. Moreover, as the associations in the current investigation were restricted to females sex-specific analysis was not conducted in the two previous studies of the rs7632287. In silico analysis suggest that rs7632287 afflicts transcription factor binding to the 3′ end of the OXTR that may be important for gene expression levels (43). However, further investigations are needed before we know if this SNP has any importance for the protein function per se or if it is in linkage disequilibrium with a functional variant.
