Genetic and environmental influences on the codevelopment among borderline personality disorder traits, major depression symptoms, and substance use disorder symptoms from adolescence to young adulthood

Abstract

Although borderline personality disorder (BPD) traits decline from adolescence to adulthood, comorbid psychopathology such as symptoms of major depressive disorder (MDD), alcohol use disorder (AUD), and drug use disorders (DUDs) likely disrupt this normative decline. Using a longitudinal sample of female twins (N = 1,763), we examined if levels of BPD traits were correlated with changes in MDD, AUD, and DUD symptoms from ages 14–24. A parallel process biometric latent growth model examined the contributions of genetic and environmental factors to the relationships between developmental components of these phenotypes. Higher BPD trait-levels predicted a greater rate of increase in AUD and DUD symptoms, and higher AUD and DUD symptoms predicted a slower rate of decline of BPD traits from ages 14–24. Common genetic influences accounted for the associations between BPD traits and each disorder, as well as the interrelationships of AUD and DUD symptoms. Both genetic and nonshared environmental influences accounted for the correlated levels between BPD traits and MDD symptoms, but solely environmental influences accounted for the correlated changes between the two over time. Results indicate that higher levels of BPD traits may contribute to an earlier onset and faster escalation of AUD and DUD symptoms, and substance use problems slow the normative decline in BPD traits. Overall, our data suggests that primarily genetic influences contribute to the comorbidity between BPD features and substance use disorder symptoms. We discuss our data in the context of two major theories of developmental psychopathology and comorbidity.

Early Detection and Outcome in Borderline Personality Disorder

“…Studies lasted from 8 to 16 years of follow-up. In these investigations were identified as predictors of early BPD substance use disorder (25, 76, 78) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (77). It is noticeable that both internalizing and externalizing disorders are implicated in promoting BPD in young patients.…”

Trajectories of pain and anxiety in a longitudinal cohort of adolescent twins

“…Twin data modeling began with a broad, preliminary test of qualitative genetic differences in which we compared a model that imposed constraints upon A, C, and E factor loadings for boys and girls to a free’ model that imposed no constraints on pain and anxiety at each of the 3 time‐points for both anxiety and pain, with Mplus (Muthén & Muthén, 1998, 2012). We then fitted a bivariate biometric additive genetic, shared environment, unique environment plus measurement error (ACE) latent growth model that allowed to simultaneously model the developmental trajectories of each phenotype via a set of latent factors that estimate each phenotype's average level (intercept) and rate of change (linear slope) at each time‐point for pain and anxiety, and the covariance between the latent growth parameters (Bornovalova et al, 2018; Neale & McArdle, 2000). Confidence intervals (CI) were obtained by bootstrapping the sample 5,000 times.…”

Burnout, Depression, and Borderline Personality: A 1,163-Participant Study

“…BP disorder notably shows pronounced comorbidity with major and persistent depressive disorders (Köhling et al, 2015 ; Bornovalova et al, 2017 ; Witt et al, 2017 ). While BP has been associated with general interpersonal dysfunction (Wilson et al, 2017 ), it has been linked to enhanced sensitivity to the mental states of others (Fertuck et al, 2009 ; Trull and Widiger, 2013 ).…”