9 Feb 2023 • New research suggests Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is transmitted from parent to child through genetics and not the way a child is raised This finding from a large, register-based study is particularly surprising because results from previous studies of major depression and anxiety disorder have shown a significant effect of parenting and a child's home environment on the risk for these disorders, the investigators note.

Working with Swedish population registries, researchers identified more than 2.4 million offspring. Of these, 27,141 individuals (1.1%) had a lifetime diagnosis of OCD. After analyzing data from all parent-child relationships, researchers found that genes plus rearing and genes only were significantly more likely to be correlated to transmission of OCD from parent to offspring than rearing alone.

"It appears from our data that the only substantial transmission that occurs is in the genes parents transmit, not by the modeling of behavior," Kendler said. Source: Medscape | Read full story