Peers' genetic traits impact substance use, mental health, finds study

Your peers can actually change your lives for the worse as a new study shows that peers genetic traits can significantly influence substance use and impact mental healthThe study highlights the longterm consequences of peers genetic makeup on individual risk for drug and alcohol use disorders depression and anxietyPeers genetic predispositions for psychiatric and substanceuse disorders are associated with an individuals own risk of developing the same disorders in young adulthood said Jessica E Salvatore an associate professor of psychiatry at the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and lead author of the studyWhat our data exemplifies is the long reach of social genetic effects she addedSociogenomics the influence of one persons genotype on anothers observable traits is an emerging fieldTo test this Salvatore and colleagues used Swedish national data to assess peer social genetic effects for several psychiatric disordersThe anonymised database included over 15 million individuals born in Sweden between 1980 and 1998Researchers mapped individuals by location and school during their teenage years and used medical pharmacy and legal registries to document substance use and mental health disorders in adulthoodModels assessed whether peers genetic predispositions predicted target individuals likelihood of experiencing substance abuse major depression and anxiety disorder in adulthoodPeers genetic predispositions were indexed with family genetic risk scores for the same conditionsEven when controlling for target individuals own genetic predispositions and family socioeconomic factors the researchers found a clear association between peers genetic predispositions and target individuals likelihood of developing a substance use or psychiatric disorderThe effects were stronger among schoolbased peers than geographicallydefined peersWithin school groups the strongest effects were among upper secondary school classmates particularly those in the same vocational or collegepreparatory track between ages 16 and 19Social genetic effects for schoolbased peers were greater for drug and alcohol use disorders than major depression and anxiety disorderThe most obvious explanation for why peers genetic predispositions might be associated with our own wellbeing is that peers genetic predispositions influence their phenotype Salvatore saidBut in our analysis we found that peers genetic predispositions were associated with target individuals likelihood of disorder even after we statistically controlled for whether peers were affected or unaffected the study indicatedSalvatore emphasised the importance of networkbased and social interventions to address these disordersPeer genetic influences have a very long reach she concludedAlso ReadConstant emotional and physical exhaustion may be a sign of burnout ExpertsThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever