Behavior Genetics最新文献

We aimed to understand the long-term impact of negative life events on epigenetic aging in 1783 adults from the Netherlands Twin Register, analyzing five epigenetic biomarkers (Hannum, Horvath, PhenoAge, GrimAge, DunedinPACE) and a series of negative life events, including victimization and economic hardship. In population-level analyses, associations between a higher number of negative life events (particularly financial adversities, sexual crimes, and job loss) were seen for the GrimAge biomarker. The association between the number of negative life events and financial problems and epigenetic age acceleration measured by the GrimAge biomarker persisted after adjusting for BMI, smoking, and white blood cell counts. In monozygotic twin pairs discordant for negative life events (263 pairs) the associations were diminished, indicating that the population associations may be confounded by shared familial (genetic and environmental) factors. These findings underscore the intricate link between environmental stressors and biological aging, stressing the need for comprehensive studies considering both genetic and environmental influences.

Breastfeeding is hypothesised to benefit child health and cognitive functioning by providing long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are essential for brain development. In 2007, Caspi et al. found evidence in two cohorts for an interaction between genetic variation in the FADS2 gene (a gene involved in fatty acid metabolism) and breastfeeding on IQ. However, subsequent studies have provided mixed evidence for the existence of an interaction. We investigated the relationship between genetic variation in the FADS2 region, breastfeeding, and their interaction in up to 335,650 individuals from the UK Biobank. We tested for the interaction over a range of cognitive functioning tests, as well as educational attainment and other traits thought to be influenced by breastfeeding, including cardiometabolic traits, number of offspring, and atopic allergy. FADS2 alleles associated with an increase in docosahexaenoic acid in blood serum (the C allele of rs174575) were associated with decreased verbal-numerical reasoning ( $p=2.28\times {10}^{-5}$ ) and triglycerides ( $p=1.40\times {10}^{-41}$ ), increased number of offspring ( $p=3.40\times {10}^{-5}$ ), total cholesterol ( $p=5.28\times {10}^{-36}$ ), HDL ( $p=1.42\times {10}^{-51}$ ), and LDL cholesterol ( $p=1.46\times {10}^{-21}$ ). We observed no evidence of an interaction in any of the traits, regardless of the modelling strategy on any cognitive or non-cognitive traits. We postulate that the previous positive findings are likely to be spurious, perhaps due to lack of appropriate control for latent population structure.

Risky sexual behavior (RSB) has been linked to externalizing problems, substance use, and, in a recent study by our lab, internalizing problems. The current study builds upon previous work investigating the relationship between RSB and internalizing problems (INT) by controlling for externalizing problems (EXT) to account for the correlation between INT and EXT. We used a twin sample from Colorado (N = 2,544) to investigate phenotypic and genetic relationships between the three latent constructs, as well as potential sex differences in those relationships. We hypothesized that the relationship between RSB and INT would be stronger for females than for males, whereas the relationship between RSB and EXT would be stronger for males than for females. We used phenotypic confirmatory factor analysis and multivariate twin analyses to address research questions. Our results show significant phenotypic relationships among RSB, INT, and EXT and provide modest evidence in males for a significant association between RSB and INT that persists when controlling for EXT, a finding which we interpret with caution. Our sex differences hypothesis was not fully supported, although the direction of effects was in the direction hypothesized for the association between RSB and INT. We discuss the complexity of RSB as a phenotype and the potential implications for public health.