Rainy Nisa R, Meaburn Emma, Oliver Bonamy R, de Roo Marthe, Kretschmer Tina
Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck, University of London, 33 Torrington Square, London, WC1E 7JL, UK.
Department of Psychology and Human Development, UCL Institute of Education, University College London, London, UK.
Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2025 Jun 30. doi: 10.1007/s00787-025-02804-8.
Adolescent internalising and externalising behaviours arise from a complex interplay of genetic and environmental factors. Understanding how parents' genes affect risk for psychopathology in offspring-whether through direct genetic transmission or environmentally mediated genetic nurture-is crucial for identifying causal mechanisms and intervention targets. However, few studies have examined this interplay rigorously in relation to adolescent psychopathology, and findings to date have remained mixed. To tackle this gap in research, we examined both genetic transmission and genetic nurture pathways using polygenic risk for psychopathology on adolescent internalising and externalising behaviours.The sample comprised 762 genotyped parent-offspring trios from the TRacking Adolescents' Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS). Parent and offspring polygenic scores for genetic liability to general psychopathology (p-PGS) were computed and jointly modelled to estimate genetically transmitted and genetic nurture contributions to parental reports of offspring internalising and externalising behaviours at age 11.Our findings indicate that parental polygenic risk for genetic liability to general psychopathology (captured as parental p-PGS) was associated with adolescent internalising-but not externalising-behaviours. Primarily this association was via environmental rather than direct genetic pathways, providing support for genetic nurture (b = 0.13, 95% CI = 0.05/0.22, q-value = 0.004). However, we found no association between parental p-PGS and adolescent-reported parenting behaviours, limiting our ability to assess whether genetic nurture effects for internalising problems were mediated by adolescent perspectives of parenting.The study highlights the importance of genetic nurture's influence on internalising behaviours, and encourages the consideration of genetic influences on perceptions of environmental influences that may be key.
青少年的内化和外化行为源于遗传和环境因素的复杂相互作用。了解父母的基因如何影响后代精神病理学风险——无论是通过直接遗传传递还是环境介导的遗传养育——对于确定因果机制和干预目标至关重要。然而，很少有研究严格考察这种与青少年精神病理学相关的相互作用，迄今为止的研究结果仍不一致。为了填补这一研究空白，我们使用精神病理学的多基因风险来研究青少年内化和外化行为的遗传传递和遗传养育途径。样本包括来自“追踪青少年个体生活调查”（TRAILS）的762个基因分型的亲子三人组。计算了父母和后代对一般精神病理学遗传易感性的多基因得分（p-PGS），并进行联合建模，以估计遗传传递和遗传养育对11岁后代内化和外化行为的父母报告的贡献。我们的研究结果表明，父母对一般精神病理学遗传易感性的多基因风险（以父母p-PGS表示）与青少年的内化行为相关，但与外化行为无关。这种关联主要是通过环境而非直接遗传途径，为遗传养育提供了支持（b = 0.13，95%CI = 0.05/0.22，q值 = 0.004）。然而，我们发现父母p-PGS与青少年报告的养育行为之间没有关联，这限制了我们评估内化问题的遗传养育效应是否由青少年对养育的看法介导的能力。该研究强调了遗传养育对内化行为影响的重要性，并鼓励考虑遗传对可能是关键的环境影响认知的影响。
