BMC Med Res Methodol
December 2024
Prior studies have reported associations between socioeconomic disadvantage, brain structure and mental health outcomes, but the timing of these relations is not well understood. Using prospective longitudinal data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), this preregistered study examined whether socioeconomic disadvantage related differentially to depressive symptoms (n=3012-3530) and cortical and subcortical structures (n=460-733) in emerging adults, depending on the timing of exposure to socioeconomic disadvantage. Family income in early childhood and own income measured concurrently were both significantly related to depressive symptoms in emerging adulthood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Limited information exists regarding the impact of pharmacotherapy in pregnancy due to ethical concerns of unintended fetal harm. Yet, maternal prescriptive drug use for chronic conditions such as hypertension is common.
Objective: To investigate potential causal relationships between perturbing maternal genetic variants influencing antihypertensive drug targets and perinatal outcomes among offspring using mendelian randomization (MR).
Importance: Prenatal diet may be causally related to autism; however, findings are inconsistent, with a limited body of research based on small sample sizes and retrospective study designs.
Objective: To investigate the associations of prenatal dietary patterns with autism diagnosis and autism-associated traits in 2 large prospective cohorts, the Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Cohort Study (MoBa), and the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC).
Design, Setting, And Participants: This cohort study used data from MoBa and ALSPAC birth cohort studies conducted across Norway and in the Southwest of England, respectively.
Background: Autism and different neurodevelopmental conditions frequently co-occur, as do their symptoms at sub-diagnostic threshold levels. Overlapping traits and shared genetic liability are potential explanations.
Methods: In the population-based Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Cohort study (MoBa), we leverage item-level data to explore the phenotypic factor structure and genetic architecture underlying neurodevelopmental traits at age 3 years (N = 41,708-58,630) using maternal reports on 76 items assessing children's motor and language development, social functioning, communication, attention, activity regulation, and flexibility of behaviors and interests.
Background: Adolescent self-reported psychotic experiences are associated with mental illness and could help guide prevention strategies. The Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences (CAPE) was developed over 20 years ago. In a rapidly changing society, where new generations of adolescents are growing up in an increasingly digital world, it is crucial to ensure high reliability and validity of the questionnaire.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOver 50% of children with a parent with severe mental illness will develop mental illness by early adulthood. However, intergenerational transmission of risk for mental illness in one's children is insufficiently considered in clinical practice, nor is it sufficiently utilised into diagnostics and care for children of ill parents. This leads to delays in diagnosing young offspring and missed opportunities for protective actions and resilience strengthening.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The timing of puberty may have an important impact on adolescent mental health. In particular, earlier age at menarche has been associated with elevated rates of depression in adolescents. Previous research suggests that this relationship may be causal, but replication and an investigation of whether this effect extends to other mental health domains is warranted.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLow birth weight raises neonatal risks and lifelong health issues and is linked to maternal medication use during pregnancy. We examined data from the Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Cohort Study and the Medical Birth Registry of Norway, including 69,828 offspring with genotype data and 81,189 with maternal genotype data. We identified genetic risk variants in placental efflux transporters, calculated genetic scores based on alleles related to transporter activity, and assessed their interaction with prenatal use of antiseizure or antidepressant medication on offspring birth weight.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe widespread comorbidity observed across psychiatric disorders may be the result of processes such as assortative mating, gene-environment correlation, or selection into population studies. Between-family analyses of comorbidity are subject to these sources of bias, whereas within-family analyses are not. Because of Mendelian inheritance, alleles are randomly assigned within families, conditional on parental alleles.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Adverse pregnancy outcomes (APO) may unmask or exacerbate a woman's underlying risk for coronary heart disease (CHD). We estimated associations of maternal and paternal genetically predicted liability for CHD with lifelong risk of APOs. We hypothesized that associations would be found for women, but not their male partners (negative controls).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe aetiology of conduct problems involves a combination of genetic and environmental factors, many of which are inherently linked to parental characteristics given parents' central role in children's lives across development. It is important to disentangle to what extent links between parental heritable characteristics and children's behaviour are due to transmission of genetic risk or due to parental indirect genetic influences via the environment (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAutism
August 2024
Biol Psychiatry
May 2024
Background: An individual's overall burden of behavioural and emotional problems across childhood is associated with increased likelihood of later mental health conditions. However, the extent of behavioural versus emotional problems - that is, the extent to which the domains are from one another - may provide additional information about who is at risk of developing a mental health condition. Here, we seek to validate differentiation as an independent predictor of later mental health conditions, and to explore its aetiology.
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