Genetic and environmental influences on relationship between anxiety sensitivity and anxiety subscales in children

Abstract

Anxiety sensitivity, a belief that symptoms of anxiety are harmful, has been proposed to influence development of panic disorder. Recent research suggests it may be a vulnerability factor for many anxiety subtypes. Moderate genetic influences have been implicated for both anxiety sensitivity and anxiety, however, little is known about the aetiology of the relationship between these traits in children. Self-reports of anxiety sensitivity and anxiety symptoms were collected from approximately 300 twin pairs at two time points. Partial correlations indicated that anxiety sensitivity at age 8 was broadly associated with most anxiety subtypes at age 10 (r=0.11-0.17, p<0.05). The associations were largely unidirectional, underpinned by stable genetic influences. Non-shared environment had unique influences on variables. Phenotypic results showed that anxiety sensitivity is a broad predictor of anxiety symptoms in childhood. Genetic results suggest that childhood is a developmental period characterised by genetic stability and time-specific environmental influences on anxiety-related traits.

Keywords: Anxiety; Anxiety sensitivity; General anxiety; Genetics; Panic disorder; Separation anxiety; Twins.

Fig. 1

Trivariate Cholesky decomposition. Note: A denotes additive genetic effects; C shared environmental effects; E non-shared environmental effects. Variance paths, which must be squared to estimate the proportion of variance accounted for, are represented by lowercase letters and followed by two numerals, e.g. a1₁, c2₂, e3₃.

Fig. 2

The trivariate Cholesky decomposition for anxiety sensitivity time 1 and panic/somatic (Fig. 1a), separation anxiety (Fig. 1b) and general anxiety (Fig. 1c) at both times. Note: All non-significant paths are presented with the dashed line. The paths denote the proportion of the variance accounted for. The square root of the values must be taken to estimate the variance paths. All shared environmental paths were non-significant and for this reason they are not presented on the figures. However, due to small sample size, C has not been formally dropped from the model. 95% confidence intervals (CIs) are presented in brackets. CIs above or below 0 indicate significant correlations. Non-overlapping CIs mean significant difference between the values.