Associations of parental and perinatal factors with subsequent risk of stress-related disorders: a nationwide cohort study with sibling comparison

• Published in: Molecular psychiatry 2022, Vol.27 (3), p.1712-1719
• Main Authors: Li, Yuchen, Sjölander, Arvid, Song, Huan, Cnattingius, Sven, Fang, Fang, Yang, Qian, Fernández de la Cruz, Lorena, Mataix-Cols, David, Brander, Gustaf, Li, Jiong, Zhang, Wei, Fall, Katja, D’Onofrio, Brian M., Almqvist, Catarina, Lichtenstein, Paul, Valdimarsdóttir, Unnur A., Lu, Donghao
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 692/699; 692/699/476; Age; Behavioral Sciences; Biological Psychology; Cohort analysis; Diabetes mellitus; Environmental factors; Epidemiology; Etiology; Medicin och hälsovetenskap; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Mental disorders; Neurosciences; Pharmacotherapy; Population; Population studies; Pregnancy; Psychiatry
• ISSN: 1359-4184; 1476-5578; 1476-5578
• DOI: 10.1038/s41380-021-01406-5

Little is known about the contribution of pregnancy-related parental and perinatal factors to the development of stress-related disorders. We aimed to investigate whether parental/perinatal adversities entail higher risks of stress-related disorders in the offspring, later in life, by accounting for genetic and early environmental factors. Based on the nationwide Swedish registers, we conducted a population-based cohort study of 3,435,747 singleton births (of which 2,554,235 were full siblings), born 1973–2008 and survived through the age of 5 years. Using both population- and sibling designs, we employed Cox regression to assess the association between parental and perinatal factors with subsequent risk of stress-related disorders. We identified 55,511 individuals diagnosed with stress-related disorders in the population analysis and 37,433 in the sibling analysis. In the population-based analysis we observed increased risks of stress-related disorders among offspring of maternal/paternal age