Identification of TNFA influencing MDD risk and clinical features in Han Chinese

•There were 807 patients with MDD and 822 well-matched healthy controls recruited for this genetic study.•This study employed 104 drug-naïve first episode MDD patients.•Our findings supported that TNFA may have an important role in the pathophysiology of MDD.•SNP rs1799724 may be associated with somatic symptom in patients with MDD. Our recent genetic-neuroimaging study observed that the rs1799724 polymorphism within the TNFA gene encoding TNF-α selectively affects the anatomy of visual cortex in patients with MDD. In this study, we hypothesized that TNFA is risk factor to MDD, and TNFA rs1799724 polymorphism may be a susceptibility locus for this disorder and its clinical features. We enrolled 807 MDD samples and 822 healthy volunteers in Eastern China. There were 104 drug-naïve first episode MDD patients recruited. The Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression -17 (HRSD-17) and Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) were performed to evaluate the severity of depressive symptoms and cognitive function, respectively. Patients with MDD have higher levels of TNFA than healthy controls (F = 20.78, P