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New York (pte045/13.06.2005/14:53) - According to a new US study, biological children of mothers who suffer from major depression or anxiety disorders suffer from asthma and other allergies, which supports a 'shared genetic liability' theory.
A psychiatrist from Columbia University in New York http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/dept/pi/ , Ramin Mojtabai, studied more than 9000 parent-child pairs from the 1999 US National Health Interview Survey, searching for a correlation between parental psychopathology and childhood allergy. Of the 9000, 554 of the pairs were non-biological.
Mojtabai found that 6 per cent of the parents suffered from major depression, 3 per cent had panic attacks and 3 per cent had generalised anxiety disorder. A total of 31 per cent of these children suffered from allergic disorders, which included hay fever, eczema, wheezing, asthma and allergies to food.
Mothers who had major depression were 67 per cent more likely to have children who suffered from allergies, whereas mothers who had panic attacks had children with a likelihood of 46 per cent being allergic.
No statistical link was found to non-biological children and the psychopathology of parents.
"The fact that adoptive parents with depression didn't show a higher level of asthma in their children provides good evidence for the possibility of common genes for depression and panic disorder on the one hand, and allergic disorders on the other hand," said Mojtabai.
Mojtabai speculates that allergy risk through the maternal link may have to do with mitochondria, whose DNA mutations have been found to be in both atopic and other skin disorders and in bipolar mood disorder.
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