Twin Study Finds Heavy Hand of Genetics in Personality Disorder

A Norwegian study of twins expands the role of genetics in the development of a personality disorder, yet cautions that expression of a disorder depends on a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

In the study, experts posited that avoidant and dependent personality disorders are characterized by anxious or fearful traits.

People with avoidant personality disorder are often anxious in the company of others and prefer to be alone. On the other hand, people with dependent personality disorder feel more secure in the company of others and tend to need other people for decision-making and excessive support.

Prior studies have suggested that genetic factors explain about one-third of the individual differences in these personality disorder traits, while the remaining variation is best explained by environmental influences.

However, the study format used by earlier researchers was a single-occasion interview. In the new study, researchers used two different measures of assessment at two different time-points in order to better measure personality disorders traits.

In 1998, researchers coordinated testing of 8,045 young adult twins using a questionnaire that included questions about personality disorder traits. Some years later, 2794 of these twins took part in a structured diagnostic interview.

Both identical (monozygotic) and fraternal (dizygotic) twins participated. Identical twins share 100 percent of their genetic material, while fraternal twins share on average 50 percent — meaning they are genetically similar to other siblings.

Researchers then compared how similar the two types of twin pairs were on a particular trait. As such, the variation between individuals was calculated and assigned to either a genetic or environmental source.

The researchers found that two-thirds of the variation in avoidant and dependent personality disorder traits could be explained by genes and that the most important environmental influences were those unique to each twin. The environmental influences can be any factor(s) that contribute to the twins in a pair being different, e.g. the influence of different friends, teachers, activities or various life events.

Researchers state that it is important to emphasize that the term heritability does not refer to individuals per se.

Heritability is a statistic that relates to the population as a whole, and is expressed as a proportion of how much the total variation in a trait, such as personality disorders, is influenced by genes.

By using two different assessment techniques at different times, researchers were better able to estimate the role of heritability than in studies that measure personality disorder once and with one instrument only.

The dual method applied in the current study allowed researchers to capture the core of these personality disorder traits and not random effects, or effects specific to a certain time point or method of assessment, said Ph.D. student and first author of the study Line C. Gjerde.

The key finding that genes are so influential in the development of personality disorders emphasizes the importance of obtaining a thorough family history from patients with symptoms of such disorders.

However, this does not mean that personality disorders are not treatable. Gjerde emphasizes that the strong genetic influence found in the study does not imply any form of determinism or prediction of disease development. That is, if a person has a family history of personality disorders, this does not necessarily mean that he or she will develop a personality disorder.

Whether or not a genetic vulnerability leads to the expression of a certain trait or disorder depends on a complex interplay of both genetic and environmental factors.

Source: Norwegian Institute of Public Health

Can trauma have genetic effects across generations?

 The Truth and Reconciliation committee has shed light on the horrors of residential schools in Canada. Dr. Amy Bombay explains the effects that trauma can have over multiple generations in relation to Canada’s First Nations people.

Can trauma have genetic effects across generations? – Home | Day 6 | CBC Radio.

A woman wipes a tear during the closing ceremony of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission, at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on Wednesday, June 3, 2015. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

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June 5, 2015

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report on residential schools in Canada laid out the neglect and abuse aboriginal children and youth were put through. Studies have shown that trauma might have an affect not only the person experiencing the trauma, but also subsequent generationsvia their DNA. Brent speaks with Amy Bombay, assistant professor of psychiatry at Dalhousie University, on the possible implications of the field of epigenetics for First Nations people.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

How exactly could a traumatic experience change a person’s DNA? 

Well this is something that we really only uncovered in the past ten to fifteen years through the study of epigenetics, which is basically the study of how environmental factors and experience can alter how genes are expressed without altering the underlying DNA sequence.

So it’s not the DNA code itself that’s being affected, it’s something else? 

That’s right. We’re all born with our with our DNA and we used to think that wasn’t changeable and it’s not. But what we know now is that experience can make certain kinds of these DNA “tags”, which is the unscientific way to talk about it, that can tag onto our DNA. Those little tags can basically turn the gene on or off. And so while the same gene is still there, it could be not functioning or functioning differently and therefore the functional aspects and roles of that DNA are different.

So why would your body do this? What’s the evolutionary advantage?

I think it really depends on the situation. Just to give you an example, the research on the long term effects of the Holocaust might help explain this. We know those who experienced chronic stress, they tend to show lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which helps our body return to normal after trauma. Those who have things like post-traumatic stress disorder, they have these low levels of cortisol and so it’s not completely clear why this is the case in survivors. But Rachel Yehuda’s team recently found that these survivors seem to be making lower levels of an enzyme that breaks down this cortisol. So this could be considered to be an adaptation to keep more free cortisol in the bodies of these people who are being starved, which would allow their livers and kidneys to maximize their stores of glucose and all of these other things that would actually help them in response to prolonged starvation and other types of stress. But that same response is not going to be adaptive for the next generation who are trying to recover in a normal environment.

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Can trauma have genetic effects across generations? – Home | Day 6 | CBC Radio.