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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Genetic and environmental influences on depressive symptoms by age and gender in African American twins | | Author(s) | Keith E Whitfield, Christopher L Edwards, Dwayne Brandon |
| Journal title | Aging & Mental Health, vol 12, no 2, March 2008 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis, March 2008 |
| Pages | pp 221-227 |
| Source | http://www.tandfonline.com |
| Keywords | Depression ; Symptoms ; Black people ; Twins ; Biological ageing ; Correlation ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | Depression is typically considered relative to individuals, and is thought to originate from both biological and environmental factors. However, the environmental constraints and insults that African Americans experience likely influence the concordance by age and gender for depression scores among older African American twins. 102 monozygotic (MZ) and 110 dizygotic (DZ) twins aged 25-88 in the Carolina African American Twin Study of Aging (CAATSA) were examined using te 11-item version of the CES-D measure of depressive symptomatology. Those participants with scores above 9 were considered depressed. Overall, the MZ pairs had a higher concordance than the DZ pairs, implying genetic influence. Both DZ and MZ males had higher concordance than either female zygotic groups. The differences between the concordance rates for MZ and DZ twin pairs was greater in males than females. By age group, the difference between concordance rates for younger MZ and SZ twin pairs was much larger than for older pairs. The results suggest that even though African Americans may be at risk for depression due to contextual environmental factors, genetic influences remain important. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-080512207 A |
| Classmark | ENR: CT: TKE: SVR: BH: 49: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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