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Genetic and Cultural Transmission of Smoking Initiation: An Extended Twin Kinship Model

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Abstract

Background

Considerable evidence from twin and adoption studies indicates that genetic and shared environmental factors play a significant role in the initiation of smoking behavior. Although twin and adoption designs are powerful to detect genetic and environmental influences, they do not provide information on the processes of assortative mating and parent–offspring transmission and their contribution to the variability explained by genetic and/or environmental factors.

Methods

We examined the role of genetic and environmental factors for smoking initiation using an extended kinship design. This design allows the simultaneous testing of additive and non-additive genetic, shared and individual-specific environmental factors, as well as sex differences in the expression of genes and environment in the presence of assortative mating and combined genetic and cultural transmission. A dichotomous lifetime smoking measure was obtained from twins and relatives in the Virginia 30,000 sample.

Results

Results demonstrate that both genetic and environmental factors play a significant role in the liability to smoking initiation. Major influences on individual differences appeared to be additive genetic and unique environmental effects, with smaller contributions from assortative mating, shared sibling environment, twin environment, cultural transmission and resulting genotype–environment covariance. The finding of negative cultural transmission without dominance led us to investigate more closely two possible mechanisms for the lower parent–offspring correlations compared to the sibling and DZ twin correlations in subsets of the data: (i) age × gene interaction, and (ii) social homogamy. Neither mechanism provided a significantly better explanation of the data, although age regression was significant.

Conclusions

This study showed significant heritability, partly due to assortment, and significant effects of primarily non-parental shared environment on smoking initiation.

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Notes

  1. This model, which assumes that assortment and cultural transmission are based on the measured phenotype, is only one of the possible mechanisms for family resemblance (Fulker 1988; Heath and Eaves 1985).

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Acknowledgments

This research has been supported by grants AG04954, GM30250, GM32732, AA06781, AA07728, AA07535 and MH40828 from NIH, grant 941177 from the NH&MRC, a gift from R.J.R. Nabisco and grants from the JM Templeton Foundation. The authors would also like to thank the twins and their families for their participation in this project. The first author is supported by grants HL60688, MH45268, DA016977, MH068521, DA018673 and the Virginia Tobacco Youth Project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Human Genetics, Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, 980003, 23298-0003, Richmond, VA, USA

    Hermine H. Maes, Michael C. Neale, Kenneth S. Kendler & Lindon J. Eaves

  2. Massey Cancer Center, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA

    Hermine H. Maes

  3. Faculty of Kinesiology and Rehabilitation Sciences, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Hermine H. Maes

  4. Department of Psychiatry, Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA

    Michael C. Neale, Kenneth S. Kendler & Lindon J. Eaves

  5. Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane, Australia

    Nicholas G. Martin

  6. Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MI, USA

    Andrew C. Heath

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  1. Hermine H. Maes
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  2. Michael C. Neale
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  3. Kenneth S. Kendler
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  4. Nicholas G. Martin
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  5. Andrew C. Heath
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  6. Lindon J. Eaves
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Correspondence to Hermine H. Maes.

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Maes, H.H., Neale, M.C., Kendler, K.S. et al. Genetic and Cultural Transmission of Smoking Initiation: An Extended Twin Kinship Model. Behav Genet 36, 795–808 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-006-9085-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-006-9085-4

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