Genetic Epidemiology, Translational Neurogenomics, Psychiatric Genetics and Statistical Genetics Laboratories investigate the pattern of disease in families, particularly identical and non-identical twins, to assess the relative importance of genes and environment in a variety of important health problems.
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PMID
16810566
TITLE
Genetic and cultural transmission of smoking initiation: an extended twin kinship model.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND NlmCategory: BACKGROUND
Considerable evidence from twin and adoption studies indicates that genetic and shared environmental factors play a significant role in the initiation of smoking behavior. Although twin and adoption designs are powerful to detect genetic and environmental influences, they do not provide information on the processes of assortative mating and parent-offspring transmission and their contribution to the variability explained by genetic and/or environmental factors.
METHODS NlmCategory: METHODS
We examined the role of genetic and environmental factors for smoking initiation using an extended kinship design. This design allows the simultaneous testing of additive and non-additive genetic, shared and individual-specific environmental factors, as well as sex differences in the expression of genes and environment in the presence of assortative mating and combined genetic and cultural transmission. A dichotomous lifetime smoking measure was obtained from twins and relatives in the Virginia 30,000 sample.
RESULTS NlmCategory: RESULTS
Results demonstrate that both genetic and environmental factors play a significant role in the liability to smoking initiation. Major influences on individual differences appeared to be additive genetic and unique environmental effects, with smaller contributions from assortative mating, shared sibling environment, twin environment, cultural transmission and resulting genotype-environment covariance. The finding of negative cultural transmission without dominance led us to investigate more closely two possible mechanisms for the lower parent-offspring correlations compared to the sibling and DZ twin correlations in subsets of the data: (i) age x gene interaction, and (ii) social homogamy. Neither mechanism provided a significantly better explanation of the data, although age regression was significant.
CONCLUSIONS NlmCategory: CONCLUSIONS
This study showed significant heritability, partly due to assortment, and significant effects of primarily non-parental shared environment on smoking initiation.
DATE PUBLISHED
2006 Nov
HISTORY
PUBSTATUS PUBSTATUSDATE
received 2005/09/13
accepted 2006/05/18
aheadofprint 2006/06/30
pubmed 2006/07/01 09:00
medline 2007/07/17 09:00
entrez 2006/07/01 09:00
AUTHORS
NAME COLLECTIVENAME LASTNAME FORENAME INITIALS AFFILIATION AFFILIATIONINFO
Maes HH Maes Hermine H HH Department of Human Genetics, Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, 980003, 23298-0003, Richmond, VA 23298-0003, USA. hmaes@vcu.edu
Neale MC Neale Michael C MC
Kendler KS Kendler Kenneth S KS
Martin NG Martin Nicholas G NG
Heath AC Heath Andrew C AC
Eaves LJ Eaves Lindon J LJ
INVESTIGATORS
JOURNAL
VOLUME: 36
ISSUE: 6
TITLE: Behavior genetics
ISOABBREVIATION: Behav. Genet.
YEAR: 2006
MONTH: Nov
DAY:
MEDLINEDATE:
SEASON:
CITEDMEDIUM: Print
ISSN: 0001-8244
ISSNTYPE: Print
MEDLINE JOURNAL
MEDLINETA: Behav Genet
COUNTRY: United States
ISSNLINKING: 0001-8244
NLMUNIQUEID: 0251711
PUBLICATION TYPE
PUBLICATIONTYPE TEXT
Journal Article
Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Twin Study
COMMENTS AND CORRECTIONS
GRANTS
GRANTID AGENCY COUNTRY
AA06781 NIAAA NIH HHS United States
AA07535 NIAAA NIH HHS United States
AA07728 NIAAA NIH HHS United States
AG04954 NIA NIH HHS United States
DA016977 NIDA NIH HHS United States
DA018673 NIDA NIH HHS United States
GM30250 NIGMS NIH HHS United States
GM32732 NIGMS NIH HHS United States
HL60688 NHLBI NIH HHS United States
MH068521 NIMH NIH HHS United States
MH40828 NIMH NIH HHS United States
MH45268 NIMH NIH HHS United States
GENERAL NOTE
KEYWORDS
MESH HEADINGS
DESCRIPTORNAME QUALIFIERNAME
Aged
Child
Culture
Female
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Models, Genetic
Retirement
Smoking psychology
Spouses psychology
Twins, Dizygotic psychology
Twins, Monozygotic psychology
Virginia psychology
SUPPLEMENTARY MESH
GENE SYMBOLS
CHEMICALS
OTHER ID's