TY - JOUR T1 - Maternal anxiety and adolescent asthma: Children of twin design suggest familial effects JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J VL - 42 IS - Suppl 57 SP - P1618 AU - Ida Havland AU - Cecilia Lundholm AU - Paul Lichtenstein AU - Jenae Niderheiser AU - Jody Ganiban AU - Erica Spotts AU - Hasse Walum AU - David Reiss AU - Catarina Almqvist Y1 - 2013/09/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/42/Suppl_57/P1618.abstract N2 - BackgroundCross-sectional studies indicate that maternal anxiety is associated with asthma in the adolescent child, but mechanisms are unclear.ObjectiveTo investigate the association between maternal anxiety and maternal, self- and register-based report of asthma in the adolescent child, and analyse whether it is caused by family-wide, environmental and/ or genetic factors.MethodFrom the Twin and Offspring Study of Sweden, 1691 mothers (1058 twins) and their adolescent child were included. The association between maternal self-reported anxiety and asthma based on subjective or objective measures were analysed using logistic regression. The children-of-twins design was used to explore whether genes or environment contribute to the association.ResultMaternal anxiety (OR 2.02, CI 1.15-3.55) was significantly associated with adolescent asthma reported by the mother. Maternal somatic anxiety (OR 1.74, CI 1.04-2.91) and psychic anxiety (OR 1.74, CI 1.05-2.86) was significantly associated with breathlessness reported by the adolescent child. In contrast, maternal anxiety was not associated with increased risk for the register-based outcomes of asthma diagnosis or medication. The results remained also after adjusting for covariates and the children-of-twins analyses which indicate that the association was due to familial confounding.ConclusionWe found associations between maternal anxiety and subjectively reported offspring asthma or breathlessness which may be due to familial effects. A likely candidate for explaining this familial confounding is heritable personality traits associated with both anxiety and subjective measures of asthma.Ref. Havland et al, In Press PLoS ONE 2013 ER -