Lifetime prevalence of mood and anxiety disorders in twin pairs discordant for schizophrenia

Michael J. Lyons, Jonathan Huppert, Rosemary Toomey, Rebecca Harley, Jack Goldberg, Seth Eisen, William True, Stephen V. Faraone, Ming T. Tsuang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

26 Scopus citations

Abstract

There have been long questions about the relationship of schizophrenia to other mental disorders. Lifetime DSM-III-R diagnoses of mood and anxiety disorders in twins with clinically diagnosed schizophrenia (n = 24) and their non-affected co-twins (n = 24) were compared with twins from pairs without schizophrenia (n = 3327) using a sample from the Vietnam Era Twin Registry. Schizophrenic probands had significantly elevated rates of all included disorders (bipolar disorder, major depression, dysthymia, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and PTSD) compared with controls (P < 0.01). The odd ratios comparing co-twins of schizophrenic probands with controls was greater than three for every disorder, but did not attain statistical significance. A similar pattern was observed when analyses were restricted to only monozygotic twins (n = 12). Consistent with other studies, schizophrenics appeared to have higher rates of a range of mental disorders. Our results suggest that schizophrenia per se represents a risk factor for other psychiatric disorders, but the absence of significantly elevated risk among non-schizophrenic co-twins suggested that family environmental and/or genetic factors that contribute to risk of schizophrenia do not increase the risk of mood and anxiety disorders to the same extent that the risk of these other disorders is increased by the presence of schizophrenia.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)28-32
Number of pages5
JournalTwin Research
Volume3
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2000

Keywords

  • Anxiety disorders
  • Discordant
  • Mood disorders
  • Schizophrenia
  • Twins

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