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Genetic and environmental sources of covariation between early drinking and adult functioning.

ABSTRACT: The vast majority of individuals initiate alcohol consumption for the first time in adolescence. Given the widespread nature of its use and evidence that adolescents may be especially vulnerable to its effects, there is concern about the long-term detrimental impact of adolescent drinking on adult functioning. While some researchers have suggested that genetic processes may confound the relationship, the mechanisms linking drinking and later adjustment remain unclear. The current study utilized a genetically informed sample and biometric modeling to examine the nature of the familial influences on this association and identify the potential for genetic confounding. The sample was drawn from the Minnesota Twin Family Study (MTFS), a longitudinal study consisting of 2,764 twins assessed in 2 cohorts at regular follow-ups from age 17 to age 29 (older cohort) or age 11 to age 29 (younger cohort). A broad range of adult measures was included assessing substance use, antisocial behavior, personality, socioeconomic status, and social functioning. A bivariate Cholesky decomposition was used to examine the common genetic and environmental influences on adolescent drinking and each of the measures of adult adjustment. The results revealed that genetic factors and nonshared environmental influences were generally most important in explaining the relationship between adolescent drinking and later functioning. While the presence of nonshared environmental influences on the association are not inconsistent with a causal impact of adolescent drinking, the findings suggest that many of the adjustment issues associated with adolescent alcohol consumption are best understood as genetically influenced vulnerabilities. (PsycINFO Database Record

SUBMITTER: Waldron JS

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5547004 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Genetic and environmental sources of covariation between early drinking and adult functioning.

Waldron Jordan Sparks JS Malone Stephen M SM McGue Matt M Iacono William G WG

Psychology of addictive behaviors : journal of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors 20170608 5

The vast majority of individuals initiate alcohol consumption for the first time in adolescence. Given the widespread nature of its use and evidence that adolescents may be especially vulnerable to its effects, there is concern about the long-term detrimental impact of adolescent drinking on adult functioning. While some researchers have suggested that genetic processes may confound the relationship, the mechanisms linking drinking and later adjustment remain unclear. The current study utilized ...[more]

PMID: 28594187

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Project description:BACKGROUND:The variation and covariation for many cardiometabolic traits have been decomposed into genetic and environmental fractions, by using twin or single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) models. However, differences in population, age, sex, and other factors hamper the comparison between twin- and SNP-based estimates. METHODS AND RESULTS:Twenty-four cardiometabolic traits and 700,000 genotyped SNPs were available in the study base of 10 682 twins from TwinGene cohort. For the 27 highly correlated pairs (absolute phenotypic correlation coefficient ?0.40), twin-based bivariate structural equation models were performed in 3870 complete twin pairs, and SNP-based bivariate genomic relatedness matrix restricted maximum likelihood methods were performed in 5779 unrelated individuals. In twin models, the model including additive genetic variance and unique/nonshared environmental variance was the best-fitted model for 7 pairs (5 of them were between blood pressure traits); the model including additive genetic variance, common/shared environmental variance, and unique/nonshared environmental variance components was best fitted for 4 pairs, but estimates of shared environment were close to zero; and the model including additive genetic variance, dominant genetic variance, and unique/nonshared environmental variance was best fitted for 16 pairs, in which significant dominant genetic effects were identified for 13 pairs (including all 9 obesity-related pairs). However, SNP models did not identify significant estimates of dominant genetic effects for any pairs. In the paired t test, twin- and SNP-based estimates of additive genetic correlation were not significantly different (both were 0.67 on average), whereas the nonshared environmental correlations from these 2 models differed slightly from each other (on average, twin-based estimate=0.64 and SNP-based estimate=0.68). CONCLUSIONS:Beside additive genetic effects and nonshared environment, nonadditive genetic effects (dominance) also contribute to the covariation between certain cardiometabolic traits (especially for obesity-related pairs); contributions from the shared environment seem to be weak for their covariation in TwinGene samples.

Project description:Evidence regarding the association between early drinking (ED) and later dependence is controversial. It has been alternately hypothesized that ED either plays a causal role in the development of dependence or that it is an early marker of increased psychosocial vulnerabilities. Despite a clear rationale for delaying youth consumption, it is important to discern this relationship. However, most epidemiological evidence comes from individual studies and high-income countries. If there is a causal link between ED and dependence, an association at the aggregate level would be expected. Furthermore, if the link is due to biological mechanisms, the association should be rather invariable regardless of the drinking context, while if the association is due to psychosocial factors, a wider variability is to be expected. We explored whether the association between ED and dependence varied across countries clustered by their shared contextual drinking characteristics. We used data from 169 countries from the Global Information System on Alcohol and Health of the World Health Organization: ED, alcohol dependence, heavy episodic drinking (HED), actual drinkers, and alcohol policy. To cluster countries by their shared drinking characteristics (prevalences of HED and actual drinkers, and alcohol policy), we used, sequentially, two multivariate data reduction techniques: a multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) and a hierarchic classification. To estimate the association between ED and alcohol dependence, beta regressions were performed, and then adjusted by country income-level and repeated by gender. The results indicated four country clusters: primarily abstainers (class 1), low drinking countries (class 2), high drinking countries (class 3), and very high drinking countries (class 4). Positive relationships between ED and alcohol dependence were found for all the countries in the world and for those in classes 1 and 2. No significant relationships were found for class 3 or class 4. These results were similar for males, but not for females, where no significant relationships were found after adjusting for income level. The association between ED and dependence varies according to the drinking context. Our findings either suggest that the ED-dependence association may be due to individual or environmental vulnerabilities that promote consumption outside cultural norms or that, if there is a causal link between ED and dependence, it is strongly moderated by psychosocial characteristics.

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Genetic and environmental sources of covariation between early drinking and adult functioning.

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Genetic and environmental sources of covariation between early drinking and adult functioning.

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