A population based family study of symptoms of anxiety and depression The HUNT study

作者：Czajkowski Nikolai^*; Roysamb Espen; Reichborn Kjennerud Ted; Tambs Kristian

来源：Journal of Affective Disorders, 2010, 125(1-3): 355-360.

DOI：10.1016/j.jad.2010.01.006

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Family study
• Heritability

Objective: To estimate an upper limit on the heritability of self-reported symptoms of anxiety and depression in a large and population representative nuclear family sample.
Method: The ten-item symptom checklist (SCL-10) was administered as part of a health survey in a Norwegian county. The SCL-10 is a shortened version of the SCL-25, assessing symptoms of anxiety and depression. In all, 46,064 people responded, and with data from Statistics Norway, responses of first-degree relatives could be linked. Polychoric correlations between family members score on SCL-10 were calculated, and a structural equation model was fitted to these correlations using the software package R.
Results: All correlations between nuclear family members were in the range of 0.12 to 0.16, indicating small but significant familial influences on SCL-10. In the best fitting model, heritability was estimated at 0.25 (95% CI = 0.22-0.27), and sibling specific environmental effects could be discarded.
Conclusions: The estimated upper level heritability for SCL-10 in our sample was lower than what has been reported in twin studies of similar measures.

• 出版日期2010-9