Gene–environment interplay in depressive symptoms: moderation by age, sex, and physical illness

Abstract

Background Numerous factors influence late-life depressive symptoms in adults, many not thoroughly characterized. We addressed whether genetic and environmental influences on depressive symptoms differed by age, sex, and physical illness. Methods The analysis sample included 24,436 twins aged 40 through 90 drawn from the Interplay of Genes and Environment across Multiple Studies (IGEMS) consortium. Biometric analyses tested age, sex, and physical illness moderation of genetic and environmental variance in depressive symptoms. Results Women reported greater depressive symptoms than men. After age 60, there was an accelerating increase in depressive symptom scores with age, but this did not appreciably affect genetic and environmental variances. Overlap in genetic influences between physical illness and depressive symptoms was greater in men than in women. Additionally, in men extent of overlap was greater with worse physical illness (the genetic correlation ranged from near .00 for the least physical illness to nearly .60 with physical illness two SD above the mean). For men and women, the same environmental factors that influenced depressive symptoms also influenced physical illness. Conclusions Findings suggested that genetic factors play a larger part in the association between depressive symptoms and physical illness for men than for women. For both sexes, across all ages, physical illness may similarly trigger social and health limitations that contribute to depressive symptoms.

Biological, Psychological, and Social Determinants of Depression: A Review of Recent Literature

“…Gender-related factors were also found to play an important role with respect to mental health [ 235 , 381 , 382 , 383 , 384 , 385 ]. Gender inequalities can start early on in the lifecourse, and women were found to be twice as likely to have depression as men.…”

The association between medical diseases and late-life depression: The presence, number, and type of medical diseases

“…Similarly, low physical activity and high depression are mentioned to be associated (McIntyre et al, 2019). Also, medical diseases are revealed to limit social life that affects higher depressive feelings (Petkus et al, 2017). Therefore, it can be concluded that medical diseases, restrictive social life, activity level, and depression are highly related.…”

“…In respect to gender, women participants are more likely to suffer more depression than the others (Lue et al, 2010). On the other hand, genetic markers of medical diseases are reported to affect men more than women in the case of depression (Petkus et al, 2017). Similarly, it is mentioned that stressful life events affect aged men more than women (Forlani et al, 2014).…”

IGEMS: The Consortium on Interplay of Genes and Environment Across Multiple Studies — An Update

“…To quantify interplay, we have applied biometric moderation models (Purcell, 2002;van der Sluis et al, 2008). We have examined GE interactions in relation to cognitive performance (Pahlen et al, 2018;Zavala et al, 2018), depression (Petkus et al, 2017), subjective health (Franz et al, 2017) and an index of physical illness (Gatz, Petkus et al, 2015). For most phenotypes, unique environmental variance was greater at older ages, presumably reflecting the accumulating importance of individual differences in environmental context with age.…”