The role of parent and offspring sex on risk for externalizing psychopathology in offspring with parental alcohol use disorder: a national Swedish study

Abstract

Offspring of parents with AUD are at increased risk for externalizing psychopathology. Maternal and paternal AUD differentially affected sons' vs. daughters' risks for AUD, drug abuse, and criminal behavior. The transmission of psychopathology within the externalizing spectrum appears to have sex-specific elements.

The Degree of Multidimensional Severity of Alcohol Use Disorder among Treatment-Seeking Patients: Is There an Additive Effect of Parental Alcohol Use Disorder?

“…Our finding of male offspring being more affected by FHP2 contrasts with one previous study that reported females being the most imparted by the additive effect concerning the development of AUD [8] but is in line with another study [11]. Hence, our findings somehow extend this finding to multidimensional addiction severity, as treatment-seeking male offspring were the most impaired when exposed to FHP2 on both employment-related problems and psychiatric status.…”

“…Hence, their study supported an additive effect on addiction severity [17], and indicates that not just the presence of AUD, but also the severity of AUD, may be impacted. In contrast to prior studies on the development of AUD [8,11], no difference was found among genders.…”

“…Indeed, this has also been reported by general population-based studies using inferential statistics and investigating on the additive effects of exposure to parental AUD where offspring have an at least twofold increased risk of developing AUD when exposed to FHP1 [4,8,11] and as high as fivefold increased risk when exposed to FHP2 [8,11]. However as already mentioned, AUD is according to diagnostic nomenclature such as ICD-10 and DSM-IV a categorical construct [1,12], and does not inform us about the degree of addiction severity.…”

“…The current focus in the empirical literature revolves around studies based on the general population, either through surveyor register-based studies. Three population-based studies have investigated whether there is an additive parental effect on the risk of offspring developing AUD [4,8,11], and the studies suggest an at least twofold increased risk when offspring is exposed to FHP1 [4,8,11] and fourfold increased risk when exposed to FHP2, when compared to FHN [8,11]. Overall, the studies support an additive effect of parental AUD, though less clear, whereas female [8] or male [11] offspring is the most impacted by the effects.…”

“…Nonetheless, an additive effect manifesting when exposed to FHP2, hence synergistic, was found on 2 parameters for male offspring, suggesting that they may be more affected by double parental exposure to genetic and environmental influences. It is, however, interesting that the conventional additive effect does not seem to impact other areas than the development of AUD [8,11] and the AUD addiction severity in a more narrow sense [17] but not in a broader sense. This finding may be due to the fact that treatment-seeking patients with AUD have alcohol as the common severity denominator, equally burdening the patients with FHN and FHP, as indicated by no differences in the alcohol composite score, and the entire sample may already be equally burdened on the addiction severity-related areas.…”