Department of Mental Disorders, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway.
PROMENTA Research Center, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
Psychol Med. 2021 Oct;51(13):2231-2246. doi: 10.1017/S0033291720005486. Epub 2021 Feb 9.
Anxiety disorders are among the most common psychiatric disorders worldwide. They often onset early in life, with symptoms and consequences that can persist for decades. This makes anxiety disorders some of the most debilitating and costly disorders of our time. Although much is known about the synaptic and circuit mechanisms of fear and anxiety, research on the underlying genetics has lagged behind that of other psychiatric disorders. However, alongside the formation of the Psychiatric Genomic Consortium Anxiety workgroup, progress is rapidly advancing, offering opportunities for future research.Here we review current knowledge about the genetics of anxiety across the lifespan from genetically informative designs (i.e. twin studies and molecular genetics). We include studies of specific anxiety disorders (e.g. panic disorder, generalised anxiety disorder) as well as those using dimensional measures of trait anxiety. We particularly address findings from large-scale genome-wide association studies and show how such discoveries may provide opportunities for translation into improved or new therapeutics for affected individuals. Finally, we describe how discoveries in anxiety genetics open the door to numerous new research possibilities, such as the investigation of specific gene-environment interactions and the disentangling of causal associations with related traits and disorders.We discuss how the field of anxiety genetics is expected to move forward. In addition to the obvious need for larger sample sizes in genome-wide studies, we highlight the need for studies among young people, focusing on specific underlying dimensional traits or components of anxiety.
焦虑障碍是全球最常见的精神障碍之一。它们通常在生命早期发作，症状和后果可持续数十年。这使得焦虑障碍成为我们这个时代最具致残性和最昂贵的疾病之一。尽管人们对恐惧和焦虑的突触和回路机制有了很多了解，但对其潜在遗传学的研究却落后于其他精神障碍。然而，随着精神病学基因组联盟焦虑工作组的成立，研究进展迅速推进，为未来的研究提供了机会。在这里，我们从遗传信息设计（即双胞胎研究和分子遗传学）综述了焦虑在整个生命周期中的遗传学知识。我们包括了特定焦虑障碍（如惊恐障碍、广泛性焦虑障碍）的研究，以及使用特质焦虑的维度测量的研究。我们特别关注大规模全基因组关联研究的发现，并展示了这些发现如何为改善或为受影响的个体提供新的治疗方法提供机会。最后，我们描述了焦虑遗传学的发现如何为许多新的研究可能性开辟了大门，例如特定基因-环境相互作用的研究以及与相关特征和疾病的因果关系的梳理。我们讨论了焦虑遗传学领域预计将如何向前发展。除了全基因组研究中需要更大的样本量之外，我们还强调了在年轻人中进行研究的必要性，重点是特定的潜在维度特征或焦虑成分。
