Allergy and Depression Share Common Genes?
Parents get blamed for most everythings related to their children whether or not they deserve it. Now comes something else - parents with major depression or panic attacks tend to have kids who suffer from atopic disorders, such as hay fever, respiratory allergies, eczema, wheezing, food allergies and asthma. (Psychosomatic Medicine, May/June 2005)
Dr. Ramin Mojtabai at Columbia University examined data on 9,240 parent-child pairs from the 1999 US National Health Interview Survey and found that in biological parent-child pairs, children were 67% more likely to suffer from atopic disorders if the parent had major depression and 46% more likely if the parent had panic attacks. This association was stronger in mother-child pairs.
Dr. Mojtabai concludes,
Findings from this study lend support to the “shared genetic liability” hypothesis for the association of childhood atopic disorders and parental major depression and panic attacks.
This seems like an off-the-wall study. Because I don’t have access to the full paper, I’m not sure what the rationale was for studying the association between parental psychopathology and childhood atopic disorders. A quick search of PubMed doesn’t make things any clearer but one study suggests that depression may reduce the threshold of tolerance for symptoms related to allergic disorders. Whether all of this translates to shared genetic susceptibility to both mental and allergic disorders is a mystery to me.
Pointer from Blogging Baby (although the Reuters article they linked to contained inconsistent and contradictory information).
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POSTED IN: Genetics of Disease
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5 opinions for Allergy and Depression Share Common Genes?
Krissy
Jun 14, 2005 at 2:48 pm
I don’t know, I don’t think it’s as wacky as it sounds.
I have all sorts of disorders, from all those listed above, and my mother does, too. I’ve always been of the opinion that they all have a common genetic glitch. If you think about the pathology of all of those things, it’s a normal situation or encounter that the body or the mind reacts to with abnormal severity.
Extreme sensitivity, if you will, emotionally or physically. I have not done a scientific study, however. This is just a guess.
Lei
Jun 14, 2005 at 10:49 pm
Krissy - Extreme sensitivity is an interesting theory!
Krissy
Jun 15, 2005 at 8:30 am
Hah! That’s the scientific way of saying, "Nice talking, but you’re wrong".
Heh.
Lei
Jun 15, 2005 at 8:38 am
Krissy - That’s not what I meant at all! I really don’t know much about this field so your guess is as good as mine (or maybe better?).
Krissy
Jun 15, 2005 at 9:39 am
I’m just poking at you. I once went with a friend of mine to the hospital because her eye was in bad shape. I conspiratorily announced to the doctor that I’d been telling my friend that it was a "Severe allergic reaction and she should to go to the hospital immediately!"
The doctor looked at me in perfectly justifiable contempt and said, "Interesting, but it’s not allergies. It’s a bad infection and she needs an IV bag of antibiotics right away."
I was, in a word, ashamed. So I always allow for the fact that I don’t know an allergic reaction from a severe infection.
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