Association between bullying victimization and obsessive-compulsive disorder : a population-based, genetically informative study
(2024) In Molecular Psychiatry- Abstract
The extent to which bullying victimization is associated with an increased risk of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has received little empirical attention. This longitudinal, population-based, genetically informative study examined whether self-reported bullying victimization at age 15 was associated with a clinical diagnosis of OCD in the Swedish National Patient Register and with self-reported obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) at ages 18 and 24 in 16,030 twins from the Child and Adolescent Twin Study in Sweden. Using a discordant twin design, including monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins, each twin was compared with their co-twin, allowing a strict control of genetic and environmental confounding. At the population level,... (More)
The extent to which bullying victimization is associated with an increased risk of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has received little empirical attention. This longitudinal, population-based, genetically informative study examined whether self-reported bullying victimization at age 15 was associated with a clinical diagnosis of OCD in the Swedish National Patient Register and with self-reported obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) at ages 18 and 24 in 16,030 twins from the Child and Adolescent Twin Study in Sweden. Using a discordant twin design, including monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins, each twin was compared with their co-twin, allowing a strict control of genetic and environmental confounding. At the population level, adjusting for birth year and sex, each standard deviation (SD) increase in bullying victimization was associated with a 32% increase in the odds of an OCD diagnosis (OR, 1.32; 95% CI, 1.21–1.44), of 0.13 SD in OCS at age 18 (β, 0.13; 95% CI, 0.11–0.16), and of 0.11 SD in OCS at age 24 (β, 0.11; 95% CI, 0.07–0.16). While associations tended to persist in the within DZ-twin comparison models, the estimates attenuated and were no longer statistically significant in the within MZ-twin comparisons. These results suggest that the association between bullying victimization and OCD/OCS is likely due to genetic confounding and therefore incompatible with a strong causal effect. Other mechanisms, such as evocative gene-environment correlations, are more plausible explanations for the observed associations.
(Less)
- author
- organization
- publishing date
- 2024
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- in press
- subject
- in
- Molecular Psychiatry
- publisher
- Nature Publishing Group
- external identifiers
-
- pmid:39580606
- scopus:85210008800
- ISSN
- 1359-4184
- DOI
- 10.1038/s41380-024-02849-2
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 5d7fb991-c9b8-4d96-afd5-6cee82478f1d
- date added to LUP
- 2025-01-20 14:48:49
- date last changed
- 2025-02-03 15:59:43
@article{5d7fb991-c9b8-4d96-afd5-6cee82478f1d,
abstract = {{<p>The extent to which bullying victimization is associated with an increased risk of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has received little empirical attention. This longitudinal, population-based, genetically informative study examined whether self-reported bullying victimization at age 15 was associated with a clinical diagnosis of OCD in the Swedish National Patient Register and with self-reported obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) at ages 18 and 24 in 16,030 twins from the Child and Adolescent Twin Study in Sweden. Using a discordant twin design, including monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins, each twin was compared with their co-twin, allowing a strict control of genetic and environmental confounding. At the population level, adjusting for birth year and sex, each standard deviation (SD) increase in bullying victimization was associated with a 32% increase in the odds of an OCD diagnosis (OR, 1.32; 95% CI, 1.21–1.44), of 0.13 SD in OCS at age 18 (β, 0.13; 95% CI, 0.11–0.16), and of 0.11 SD in OCS at age 24 (β, 0.11; 95% CI, 0.07–0.16). While associations tended to persist in the within DZ-twin comparison models, the estimates attenuated and were no longer statistically significant in the within MZ-twin comparisons. These results suggest that the association between bullying victimization and OCD/OCS is likely due to genetic confounding and therefore incompatible with a strong causal effect. Other mechanisms, such as evocative gene-environment correlations, are more plausible explanations for the observed associations.</p>}},
author = {{Pol-Fuster, Josep and Fernández de la Cruz, Lorena and Isomura, Kayoko and Sidorchuk, Anna and Kuja-Halkola, Ralf and Lichtenstein, Paul and D’Onofrio, Brian M. and Brikell, Isabell and Larsson, Henrik and de Schipper, Elles and Beucke, Jan C. and Mataix-Cols, David}},
issn = {{1359-4184}},
language = {{eng}},
publisher = {{Nature Publishing Group}},
series = {{Molecular Psychiatry}},
title = {{Association between bullying victimization and obsessive-compulsive disorder : a population-based, genetically informative study}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41380-024-02849-2}},
doi = {{10.1038/s41380-024-02849-2}},
year = {{2024}},
}