Lau Jennifer Y F, Eley Thalia C, Stevenson Jim
Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, UK.
J Abnorm Child Psychol. 2006 Feb;34(1):19-27. doi: 10.1007/s10802-005-9006-7.
State and trait anxiety define different aspects of anxiety, and may represent environmentally and genetically mediated components of this phenotype. Furthermore their relationship, where trait anxiety is expressed through levels of state anxiety under threatening circumstances, may represent a process of interplay between a genetic vulnerability factor and an environmental stressor. To test these hypotheses, we explored genetic and environmental influences on measures of state and trait anxiety in a sample of 1058 twins (521 males and 537 females) aged 8-16. The results were consistent with these hypotheses. State anxiety is largely influenced by environmental factors in males and females whereas trait anxiety shows moderate genetic effects and substantial non-shared environment effects. Their association was accounted for by non-shared environmental effects, with modest genetic and shared environmental inputs. The implications of these results for vulnerability mechanisms involving stress reactivity on anxiety are discussed.
状态焦虑和特质焦虑定义了焦虑的不同方面，可能代表了该表型的环境介导和基因介导成分。此外，它们之间的关系，即特质焦虑通过威胁情境下的状态焦虑水平表现出来，可能代表了遗传易感性因素和环境应激源之间的相互作用过程。为了验证这些假设，我们在一个由1058名8至16岁双胞胎（521名男性和537名女性）组成的样本中，探讨了基因和环境对状态焦虑和特质焦虑测量值的影响。结果与这些假设一致。状态焦虑在很大程度上受男性和女性环境因素的影响，而特质焦虑则显示出中等程度的遗传效应和显著的非共享环境效应。它们之间的关联由非共享环境效应解释，基因和共享环境的影响较小。本文讨论了这些结果对涉及焦虑应激反应的易感性机制的意义。
