@article{ref1,
title="Are stressful life events causally related to the severity of obsessive-compulsive symptoms? A monozygotic twin difference study",
journal="European psychiatry",
year="2014",
author="Vidal-Ribas, P. and Stringaris, A. and Rück, C. and Serlachius, E. and Lichtenstein, P. and Mataix-Cols, D.",
volume="30",
number="2",
pages="309-316",
abstract="Traumatic or stressful life events have long been hypothesized to play a role in causing or precipitating obsessive-compulsive symptoms but the impact of these environmental factors has rarely been investigated using genetically informative designs. We tested whether a wide range of retrospectively-reported stressful life events (SLEs) influence the lifetime presence and severity of obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) in a large Swedish population-based cohort of 22,084 twins. Multiple regression models examined whether differences in SLEs within twin pairs were significantly associated with differences in OCS. In the entire sample (i.e., both monozygotic [MZ] and dizygotic twin pairs), two SLEs factors, &quot;abuse and family disruption&quot; and &quot;sexual abuse&quot;, were significantly associated with the severity of OCS even after controlling for depressive symptoms. Other SLEs factors were either not associated with OCS (&quot;loss&quot;, &quot;non-sexual assault&quot;) or were no longer associated with OCS after controlling for depression (&quot;illness/injury&quot;). Within MZ pair analyses, which effectively control for genetic and shared environmental effects, showed that only the &quot;abuse and family disruption&quot; factor remained independently related to within-pair differences in OCS severity, even after controlling for depressive symptoms. Despite being statistically significant, the magnitude of the associations was small; &quot;abuse and family disruption&quot; explained approximately 3% of the variance in OCS severity. We conclude that OCS are selectively associated with certain types of stressful life events. In particular, a history of interpersonal abuse, neglect and family disruption may make a modest but significant contribution to the severity of OCS. Further replication in longitudinal cohorts is essential before causality can be firmly established.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0924-9338",
doi="10.1016/j.eurpsy.2014.11.008",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eurpsy.2014.11.008"
}