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Adverse life event reporting and worst illness episodes in unipolar and bipolar affective disorders: measuring environmental risk for genetic research

Hosang, G. M., Korszun, A., Jones, L., Jones, Ian ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5821-5889, Gray, J. M., Gunasinghe, C. M., McGuffin, P. and Farmer, A. E. 2010. Adverse life event reporting and worst illness episodes in unipolar and bipolar affective disorders: measuring environmental risk for genetic research. Psychological Medicine 40 (11) , pp. 1829-1837. 10.1017/S003329170999225X

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Abstract

Background Studies exploring gene–environment interplay in affective disorders now include very large numbers of participants. Methods for evaluating the role of adversity in such studies need to be developed that do not rely on lengthy and labour-intensive interviews. In the present study, a brief questionnaire method for measuring 11 adverse events reported before interview and before their worst illness episodes by bipolar, unipolar and healthy control participants, participating in genetic association studies, was evaluated. Method Five hundred and twelve bipolar disorder (BD) participants, 1447 participants with recurrent unipolar depression (UPD) and 1346 psychiatrically healthy control participants underwent the researcher-administered version of the List of Threatening Experiences Questionnaire (LTE-Q) for the 6 months before their worst affective episodes for UPD and BD participants, and for the 6 months before interview for the UPD participants and controls. Results UPD and BD cases were significantly more likely to report at least one event, as well as more events in the 6 months before interview and before their worst illness episodes, than healthy controls. Both manic and depressive episodes were significantly associated with adverse events in the BD cases. Depressed mood at the time of interview influenced event reporting in UPD and control participants but not the BD cases. Age was negatively correlated with the number of events reported by controls. Conclusions The researcher-administered LTE-Q provides a measure of case-control differences for adversity that is applicable in large genetic association studies. Confounding factors for event reporting include present mood and age.

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Publication
Status: Published
Schools: MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics (CNGG)
Psychology
Subjects: R Medicine > R Medicine (General)
Uncontrolled Keywords: Bipolar affective disorder; gene-environment interplay; genetics; stressful life events; unipolar depression
Additional Information: Pdf uploaded in accordance with publisher's policy at http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/issn/0033-2917/ (accessed 25/02/2014).
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISSN: 0033-2917
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 30 March 2016
Last Modified: 07 May 2023 21:21
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/29784

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