Do the Genetic or Environmental Determinants of Anxiety and Depression Change with Age? A Longitudinal Study of Australian Twins

Gillespie, Nathan A.; Kirk, Katherine M.; Evans, David M.; Heath, Andrew C.; Hickie, Ian B.; Martin, Nicholas G.

doi:10.1375/13690520460741435

Cited by 70 publications

(75 citation statements)

References 87 publications

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“…The genetic stability in neuroticism between the ages of 14 and 31 is also similar to the genetic stability reported for symptoms of anxiety and depression, two traits strongly correlated to neuroticism (Gillespie et al, 2004b;Nivard et al, 2014). The implications of the high degree of genetic stability for genome-wide association studies (GWAS) were discussed by Wray et al (2007).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 53%

Genetic and Environmental Stability of Neuroticism From Adolescence to Adulthood

et al. 2015

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Longitudinal studies of neuroticism have shown that, on average, neuroticism scores decrease from adolescence to adulthood. The heritability of neuroticism is estimated between 0.30 and 0.60 and does not seem to vary greatly as a function of age. Shared environmental effects are rarely reported. Less is known about the role of genetic and environmental influences on the rank order stability of neuroticism in the period from adolescence to adulthood. We studied the stability of neuroticism in a cohort sequential (classical) twin design, from adolescence (age 14 years) to young adulthood (age 32 years). A genetic simplex model that was fitted to the longitudinal neuroticism data showed that the genetic stability of neuroticism was relatively high (genetic correlations between adjacent age bins >0.9), and increased from adolescence to adulthood. Environmental stability was appreciably lower (environmental correlations between adjacent age bins were between 0.3 and 0.6). This low stability was largely due to age-specific environmental variance, which was dominated by measurement error. This attenuated the age-to-age environmental correlations. We constructed an environmental covariance matrix corrected for this error, under the strong assumption that all age-specific environmental variance is error variance. The environmental (co)variance matrix corrected for attenuation revealed highly stable environmental influences on neuroticism (correlations between adjacent age bins were between 0.7 and 0.9). Our results indicate that both genetic and environmental influences have enduring effects on individual differences in neuroticism.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 53%

Genetic and Environmental Stability of Neuroticism From Adolescence to Adulthood

et al. 2015

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“…The similarity of results support the conclusion that the present two-stage sampling design and missing data technique is a valid method to model data collected from a cohort sampled for past gambling history. The stability of the genetic contribution to PG symptoms is consistent with another twin study of anxiety across adulthood (Gillespie et al, 2004). From this previous report and our current findings, there is evidence that genetic architecture may be stable in adult psychopathology.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Genetic and Environmental Contributions to Pathological Gambling Symptoms in a 10-Year Follow-Up

et al. 2007

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Problem (P) and pathological gambling (PG) symptoms wax and wane. Past symptoms are a risk for future symptoms even after controlling for familial influences. To address the genetic architecture of lifetime PG and current PG symptoms, we tested for common and unique genetic factors to lifetime PG symptoms at baseline and past year PG symptoms at 10-year follow-up. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed., Rev.; DSM-III-R; American Psychiatric Association, 1987) lifetime criteria of one or more PG symptoms were derived in 1992 and past year PG symptoms in 2002 from 1675 individual twins from the Vietnam Era Twin Registry. Cholesky decomposition models were fit to baseline and past year PG symptoms. Under the best fitting model we observed that 49% of the risk for one or more baseline PG symptoms in 1992 was due to a genetic factor and 51% of the risk was due to a unique environmental factor. All of the genetic variance (57.5%) in risk to past year PG symptoms in 2002 was common with baseline PG symptoms. Unique environment accounted for the remaining variance in past year PG symptoms with 13% common to baseline and 30% specific to past year PG symptoms. The genetic contributions to lifetime and past year gambling symptoms 10 years later are similar. There is no evidence for genetic contributions unique to past year PG symptoms. However, most of the unique environmental influences to past year PG are not shared with lifetime PG. This may reflect the changed social–cultural environment between 1992 and 2002, characterized by increasing access to legalized gambling.

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“…As a consequence, more Australian twins and siblings were diagnosed with one or more disorders. However, a recent study found that genetic and environmental determinants of anxiety and depression hardly show any change with age, so this age difference has probably not influenced our results (Gillespie et al, 2004). Another limitation is that test-retest data were not available for our samples, which made it impossible to estimate the reliability of the lifetime interviews.…”

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confidence: 90%

Familial Clustering of Major Depression and Anxiety Disorders in Australian and Dutch Twins and Siblings

et al. 2005

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T he aim of this study was to investigate familial influences and their dependence on sex for panic disorder and/or agoraphobia, social phobia, generalized anxiety disorder and major depression. Data from Australian (N = 2287) and Dutch (N = 1185) twins and siblings who were selected for a linkage study and participated in clinical interviews to obtain lifetime Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; DSM-IV) diagnoses were used. In a liability model, tetrachoric correlations were estimated in sibling pairs and sex differences between sibling correlations were tested. For each diagnosis, the sibling correlations could be constrained to be equal across the Australian and Dutch samples. With the exception of panic disorder and/or agoraphobia, all sibling correlations were the same for brother, sister and opposite-sex sibling pairs and were around .20. For panic disorder and/or agoraphobia, the correlation was .23 in brother and sister pairs, but absent in opposite-sex sibling pairs. From these results it can be concluded that upper heritability estimates, based on twice the correlations in the sibling pairs, vary between 36% (major depression) and 50% (social phobia). Furthermore, different genetic risk factors appear to contribute to the vulnerability for panic disorder and/or agoraphobia in men and women. No other sex differences were found.Anxiety disorders and major depression (MDD) are common disorders. In epidemiological studies, lifetime prevalences in women are found to be around 30% for some kind of anxiety disorders and around 20% for MDD (Bijl et al., 1998;Kessler et al., 1994). Although these prevalences are lower in men, they are still high with figures ranging between 14% and 19% for anxiety disorders and between 11% and 13% for MDD (Bijl et al., 1998;Kessler et al., 1994). These prevalences may be even higher as cross-sectional surveys are biased by recall problems. When recall bias is considered, the prevalence of lifetime MDD is estimated at 30% in men and 40% in women (Kruijshaar et al., 2005). These disorders constitute a huge public health problem, mainly due to the chronic and disabling course, but in the case of MDD, also as a result of the increased risk for other major diseases such as cardiac mortality (Musselman et al., 1998;Penninx et al., 2001).Consequently, the etiology of these disorders is an important topic of research. Over the last 20 years, several family and twin studies have been performed to investigate the influence of familial factors on anxiety and depression. In the description of the results, we will focus on MDD, panic disorder and/or agoraphobia, social phobia and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Sullivan et al. (2000) and Hettema, Neale, et al. (2001) discussed the results of family and twin studies on lifetime diagnoses of MDD and anxiety disorders respectively and performed a metaanalysis when possible. They included studies in which the disorders were defined by operationalized diagnostic criteria, such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Man...

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Do the Genetic or Environmental Determinants of Anxiety and Depression Change with Age? A Longitudinal Study of Australian Twins

Cited by 70 publications

References 87 publications

Genetic and Environmental Stability of Neuroticism From Adolescence to Adulthood

Genetic and Environmental Stability of Neuroticism From Adolescence to Adulthood

Genetic and Environmental Contributions to Pathological Gambling Symptoms in a 10-Year Follow-Up

Familial Clustering of Major Depression and Anxiety Disorders in Australian and Dutch Twins and Siblings

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