Spinal pain in employees exposed to abusive supervision: Evidence of a sex and CRHR1 CTC haplotype interaction

Previous findings suggest that exposure to social stress in the form of abusive supervision may increase the risk of musculoskeletal disorders. In the present study, we examined the link between abusive supervision, the CRHR1 genotype and spinal pain. The data were collected through a national survey drawn from the National Central Employee Register by Statistics Norway. A total of 1226 individuals returned both the questionnaire and the saliva kit. Abusive supervision was measured by a 5-item version of the Tepper’s 2000 scale. Spinal pain was measured by 3 items (neck-, upper and low back pain). Genotyping with regard to CRHR1 rs242941, rs242939 and rs1876828 was carried out using Taqman assay, and Phase v.2.1.1 was used to define the CRHR1 allele combinations. The analyses revealed that abusive supervision was associated with spinal pain. In particular, we observed a strong effect of abusive supervision on spinal pain in female +CTC/+CTC carriers (p = 0.002). Moreover, using +CTC/+CTC as a reference, +CTC/−CTC and −CTC/−CTC both showed protective effects (p = 0.024, p = 0.002, respectively). Also, our data demonstrated a clear sex and CRHR1 CTC haplotype interaction (p = 0.013). No such gene-environment interaction was seen in men. Our data demonstrated that the CRHR1 CTC haplotype may exacerbate the effect of abusive supervision on spinal pain in female employees. Hence, the present study supports the theory that both gender and the CRHR1 genotype, may moderate the pain responses to social stressors.