Heritability of social anxiety disorder: a systematic review of methodological designs

Abstract

Background: The investigation of heritability stands out as an important means to establish the weight of genetic and environmental factors in the development of social anxiety disorder. Objective: This study aims to make a critical review of methodological designs used in the investigation of the social anxiety disorder (SAD) heritability. Methods: We reviewed 31 research articles published until October 2015 and found through the electronic search bases PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus and manual searches in the reference lists of the selected references. Most of the investigations involved adult samples and twins to assess heritability. Results: There was great variability in the screening and diagnostic instruments used in the studies, leading to different outcomes. Structural equation models proved to be the most adequate to assess SAD heritability, allowing better estimates of this aspect of the disorder. SAD heritability rates varied between 13% and 76% in the articles reviewed. Discussion: We discuss methodological aspects that may affect the quality and the development of improved studies to investigate SAD heritability such as sample size, quality of screening instruments, and use of diagnostic interviews. More homogeneous investigations involving larger samples and standardized instruments and methods are desirable and opportune.

Evolutionary Ecological Model of Defence Activation Disorders Via the Marginal Value Theorem

“…The heritability of anxiety disorders, panic disorders and social phobia ranges from 30 to 67%, 24 30 to 60%, and 13 to 76%, respectively. 25 In other words, genetic conditions that significantly lower the fitness of individuals continue at high frequencies in human populations. Although activation of defensive mechanisms contributes to the survival of individuals according to the EMT, heightened levels of defence activation seem to be related to low fitness.…”

Gene–environment interaction: New insights into perceived parenting and social anxiety among adolescents

“…The first insights into the genetic architecture of SAD vulnerability came from candidate gene (CG) studies and two genomewide association studies (GWASs). In the study of Trzaskowsk et al [21] on anxiety traits in 2,810 seven-year-old children, no single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) reached the genome wide threshold for significance, and the SNPs that showed the lowest p values with relation to social anxiety traits (rs2772129 and rs2922037) could not be replicated in another similar cohort of 4,804 children. More promising were the findings of an even larger GWAS on anxiety traits by Stein et al [18], who reported two SNPs that were significantly associated with social anxiety (rs78924501 on Chr 1 in African American and rs708012 on Chr 6 in European American samples).…”

Heritability in social anxiety disorder and its impact on executive functioning, facial expression recognition, and symptomatic profile

“…The hypothesis that monozygotic twins would present higher correlation of scores in instruments than the correlation of dizygotic twins was based in a variety of previous studies that presented these findings (Moreno, Osório, Martin-Santos & Crippa, 2016). In our sample, correlation values were different between monozygotic and dizygotic twins, but when confidence intervals were considered, this difference was not significative.…”

“…Although a hot topic in the field of psychopathology, estimates of heritability in SAD have presented very controversial results, mainly related to the diversity of methods used (Moreno, Martin-Santos, Osório & Crippa, 2016). Regardless, estimate the heritability of variables associated with SAD, such as facial emotion recognition, is essential to understand better the complex puzzle that leads to the development and maintenance of SAD.…”

“…A recent review of heritability of social anxiety disorder (Moreno, Osório, Martin-Santos, & Crippa, 2016) reported that heritability rates vary between 13% and 76%,…”