Shared environmental contributions to substance use.
The current study examined the association between substance use in the household during childhood, parental attitudes towards substance use and lifetime substance use in males. Subjects included 1081 monozygotic and 707 dizygotic twins from the Virginia Adult Twin Study of Psychiatric and Substance Use Disorders. Retrospective reports of substance use and features of the family environment (adult household substance use and parental attitudes towards substance use) were obtained using a life history interview. A trivariate Cholesky decomposition was conducted using the program Mx to decompose common shared environmental variance. Findings suggest that family environmental factors accounted for a large proportion of the shared environmental effects for illicit drug use. Results illustrate an important way of extending behavior genetic research to reveal specific etiological environmental mechanisms.
Department of Psychiatry, Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavior Genetics, Medical College of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23298, USA.
Jessica H
JH
Baker
Hermine H
HH
Maes
Kenneth S
KS
Kendler
D000328:Adult; D004247:DNA / Q000235:genetics; D004777:Environment; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008957:Models, Genetic; D010290:Parents; D010641:Phenotype; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D014429:Twins, Dizygotic; D014430:Twins, Monozygotic; D055815:Young Adult
D004247:DNA