Exploring the possibility of parents’ broad internalizing phenotype acting through passive gene–environment correlations on daughters’ disordered eating

Abstract

Twin studies demonstrate significant environmental influences and a lack of genetic effects on disordered eating before puberty in girls. However, genetic factors could act indirectly through passive gene–environment correlations (rGE; correlations between parents’ genes and an environment shaped by those genes) that inflate environmental (but not genetic) estimates. The only study to explore passive rGE did not find significant effects, but the full range of parental phenotypes (e.g., internalizing symptoms) that could impact daughters’ disordered eating was not examined. We addressed this gap by exploring whether parents’ internalizing symptoms (e.g., anxiety, depressive symptoms) contribute to daughters’ eating pathology through passive rGE. Participants were female twin pairs (aged 8–14 years; M = 10.44) in pre-early puberty and their biological parents (n = 279 families) from the Michigan State University Twin Registry. Nuclear twin family models explored passive rGE for parents’ internalizing traits/symptoms and twins’ overall eating disorder symptoms. No evidence for passive rGE was found. Instead, environmental factors that create similarities between co-twins (but not with their parents) and unique environmental factors were important. In pre-early puberty, genetic factors do not influence daughters’ disordered eating, even indirectly through passive rGE. Future research should explore sibling-specific and unique environmental factors during this critical developmental period.

Special Issue editorial: Leveraging genetically informative study designs to understand the development and familial transmission of psychopathology

“…Bivariate biometric models also indicated little evidence of evocative gene-environment correlation, significant shared environmental overlap between both warm and harsh parenting and child executive functioning (i.e., either passive gene-environment correlation or environmental mediation), and some overlap of nonshared environmental influences on harsh parenting and child executive functioning, after accounting for genetic confounds. O'Connor et al (2022) used the nuclear twin family study in the Michigan State University Twin Registry to examine disordered eating among pre-early puberty girls. They found that sibling level, but not parent-child level, shared environmental influences and nonshared environmental influences accounted for disordered eating, with no evidence of direct or indirect (via passive geneenvironment correlation) genetic influences.…”