Gene-by-Crisis Interaction for Optimism and Meaning in Life: The Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Optimism in dire times: The buffering role of optimism in the relationship between food insecurity and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic

Considering the need to gain a deeper understanding of the protective factors associated with coping with food insecurity, specifically in times of severe prolonged stress, the current longitudinal study seeks to examine the role of optimism in the relationship between food insecurity and adverse mental health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. A three-wave longitudinal study involving 1921 Israeli adults was performed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants completed questionnaires assessing food insecurity, anxiety, depression, optimism, and socio-demographic characteristics. To explore the relationship between food insecurity and symptoms of anxiety and depression, as well as the moderating role of optimism in this relationship, we employed a set of panel regression models with individual fixed effects. Our results indicate that the degree and change in food insecurity over time were positively associated with both anxiety and depression symptoms, whereas the degree and change in optimism were negatively correlated. Optimism was found to moderate the association between food insecurity and anxiety symptoms over time, but not the association between food insecurity and depression symptoms. A subgroup analysis revealed that optimism moderated the relationship between food insecurity and anxiety and depression for women, but not for men; for married/coupled individuals but not for singles; for non-parents with regard to anxiety, and for parents with regard to depression. Our results highlight the need to practice and enhance optimism in times of great despair, uncertainty, and hardship, especially in situations of food insecurity where tangible change may take time.

Maximizing the value of twin studies in health and behaviour

In the classical twin design, researchers compare trait resemblance in cohorts of identical and non-identical twins to understand how genetic and environmental factors correlate with resemblance in behaviour and other phenotypes. The twin design is also a valuable tool for studying causality, intergenerational transmission, and gene-environment correlation and interaction. Here we review recent developments in twin studies, recent results from twin studies of new phenotypes and recent insights into twinning. We ask whether the results of existing twin studies are representative of the general population and of global diversity, and we conclude that stronger efforts to increase representativeness are needed. We provide an updated overview of twin concordance and discordance for major diseases and mental disorders, which conveys a crucial message: genetic influences are not as deterministic as many believe. This has important implications for public understanding of genetic risk prediction tools, as the accuracy of genetic predictions can never exceed identical twin concordance rates.

Daily affect intensity and variability of adolescents and their parents before and during a COVID-19 lockdown

INTRODUCTION

The corona virus (COVID-19) pandemic may have a prolonged impact on people's lives, with multiple waves of infections and lockdowns, but how a lockdown may alter emotional functioning is still hardly understood.

METHODS

In this 100-daily diaries study, we examined how to affect intensity and variability of adolescents (N = 159, M_age  = 13.3, 61.6% female) and parents (N = 159, M_age  = 45.3, 79.9% female) changed after the onset and during (>50 days) the second COVID-19 lockdown in the Netherlands, using preregistered piecewise growth models.

RESULTS

We found only an unexpected increase in parents' positive affect intensity after the lockdown onset, but no immediate changes in negative affect intensity or variability. However, both adolescents and parents reported gradual increases in negative affect intensity and variability as the lockdown prolonged. Lockdown effects did not differ between adolescents and parents. However, within groups, individuals differed. The individual differences in the effects were partly explained by life satisfaction, depressive symptoms, and self-reported lockdown impact.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, these findings suggests that a lockdown triggers changes in daily affective well-being especially as the lockdown prolongs. Individual differences in the effects indicate heterogeneity in the impact of the lockdown on daily affect that was partly explained by baseline life satisfaction and depressive symptoms. However, more knowledge on the causes of this heterogeneity is needed to be able to increase resilience to lockdown effects in the population.

Stability and change in genetic and environmental influences on depressive symptoms in response to COVID-19 pandemic

BACKGROUND

The rapid spread of the new Coronavirus and the consequent restrictions to contain transmission generated an unprecedented psychological impact on the general population. The Italian Twin Registry performed a longitudinal study to investigate to what extent genetic and environmental influences contributed to changes in depressive symptoms.

METHODS

Data from adult twins were collected. All participants completed an online questionnaire including the 2-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-2) just before (February 2020) and immediately after the Italian lockdown (June 2020). Genetic modeling based on Cholesky decomposition was used to estimate the role of genetic (A) and both shared (C) and unshared (E) environmental factors in the observed longitudinal course of depressive symptoms.

RESULTS

Longitudinal genetic analysis was based on 348 twin pairs (215 monozygotic and 133 dizygotic pairs) with a mean age of 42.6 years (range 18-93 years). An AE Cholesky model provided heritability estimates for depressive symptoms of 0.24 and 0.35 before and after the lockdown period, respectively. Under the same model, the observed longitudinal trait correlation (0.44) was approximately equally contributed by genetic (46%) and unshared environmental (54%) influences, while longitudinal environmental correlation was lower than genetic correlation (0.34 and 0.71, respectively).

CONCLUSIONS

Although the heritability of depressive symptoms was rather stable across the targeted time window, different environmental as well as genetic factors seemed to act before and after the lockdown, which suggests possible gene-environment interaction.

Is the Pandemic Wearing Us Out? A Cross-Sectional Study of the Prevalence of Fatigue in Adult Twins without Previous SARS-CoV-2 Infection

During the pandemic, mental health was not only impaired in people after a SARS-CoV-2 infection, but also in people without previous infection. This is the first study on twins without prior SARS-CoV-2 infection to estimate the influence of genetic components and shared as well as individual environments on pandemic-associated fatigue. The study sample included 55 monozygotic and 45 dizygotic twin pairs. A total of 34.5% reported an increase in fatigue since the pandemic. A significant correlation was shown between the responses within monozygotic (χ2[1] = 11.14, p = 0.001) and dizygotic pairs (χ2[1] = 18.72, p < 0.001). In all pandemic-associated fatigue dimensions, individual environment (ranging from e2 = 0.64 to e2 = 0.84) and heritability (ranging from h2 = 0.32 to h2 = 1.04) seem to have the highest impact. The number of comorbidities significantly correlated with physical fatigue (Spearman’s ρ = 0.232, p < 0.001) and psychological impairment due to pandemic measures with the total fatigue score (Spearman’s ρ = 0.243, p < 0.001). However, calculated ANCOVAs with these significant correlations as covariates showed no significant influence on the mean values of the respective fatigue dimensions. Susceptibility to pandemic-associated fatigue may be genetically and environmentally determined, while intensity is also influenced by individual components. The prevalence of fatigue is high even in individuals without prior SARS-CoV-2 infection. Future mental health prevention and intervention programs should be implemented to alleviate the impact of the pandemic on the global population.

The consequences of a year of the COVID-19 pandemic for the mental health of young adult twins in England and Wales

BACKGROUND

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all our lives, not only through the infection itself but also through the measures taken to control the spread of the virus (e.g. lockdown).

AIMS

Here, we investigated how the COVID-19 pandemic and unprecedented lockdown affected the mental health of young adults in England and Wales.

METHOD

We compared the mental health symptoms of up to 4773 twins in their mid-20s in 2018 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (T1) and during four-wave longitudinal data collection during the pandemic in April, July and October 2020, and in March 2021 (T2-T5) using phenotypic and genetic longitudinal designs.

RESULTS

The average changes in mental health were small to medium and mainly occurred from T1 to T2 (average Cohen d = 0.14). Despite the expectation of catastrophic effects of the pandemic on mental health, we did not observe trends in worsening mental health during the pandemic (T3-T5). Young people with pre-existing mental health problems were disproportionately affected at the beginning of the pandemic, but their increased problems largely subsided as the pandemic persisted. Twin analyses indicated that the aetiology of individual differences in mental health symptoms did not change during the lockdown (average heritability 33%); the average genetic correlation between T1 and T2-T5 was 0.95, indicating that genetic effects before the pandemic were substantially correlated with genetic effects up to a year later.

CONCLUSIONS

We conclude that on average the mental health of young adults in England and Wales has been remarkably resilient to the effects of the pandemic and associated lockdown.

Increased genetic contribution to wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic

Physical and mental health are determined by an interplay between nature, for example genetics, and nurture, which encompasses experiences and exposures that can be short or long-lasting. The COVID-19 pandemic represents a unique situation in which whole communities were suddenly and simultaneously exposed to both the virus and the societal changes required to combat the virus. We studied 27,537 population-based biobank participants for whom we have genetic data and extensive longitudinal data collected via 19 questionnaires over 10 months, starting in March 2020. This allowed us to explore the interaction between genetics and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals' wellbeing over time. We observe that genetics affected many aspects of wellbeing, but also that its impact on several phenotypes changed over time. Over the course of the pandemic, we observed that the genetic predisposition to life satisfaction had an increasing influence on perceived quality of life. We also estimated heritability and the proportion of variance explained by shared environment using variance components methods based on pedigree information and household composition. The results suggest that people's genetic constitution manifested more prominently over time, potentially due to social isolation driven by strict COVID-19 containment measures. Overall, our findings demonstrate that the relative contribution of genetic variation to complex phenotypes is dynamic rather than static.

Flattening the quality of life curve? A prospective person-centred study from Norway amid COVID-19

Purpose

We examined multidimensional, heterogeneous reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic and associated measures to provide further insights into the developmental processes of risk and adaptation.

Method

We used three-wave questionnaire data from 8156 individuals participating in the Norwegian County Public Health Survey assessed 1–5 months before and three (June 2020) and nine (December 2020) months after the outbreak. Latent profile and latent transition analyses were used to identify latent quality of life (QoL) classes and multiform changes, their probabilities, and predictors.

Results

We identified five distinct QoL classes of varying proportions, namely Flourishing (i.e. 24–40%), Content (31–46%), Content-Symptomatic (8–10%), Languishing (14–20%), and Troubled (2–5%). Despite higher levels of negative affect and lower levels of life satisfaction and positive emotions, most individuals remained in their pre-pandemic QoL profiles. Yet, changes occurred for a meaningful proportion, with transition to a less favourable class more common than to a favourable. Between time 1 and 3, the flourishing and troubled groups decreased by 40% and 60%, while the content and languishing groups increased by 48% and 43%, respectively. Favourable pre-pandemic relational (marital status, support, interpersonal trust, and belonging), health, and economy-related status predicted significantly lower odds of belonging to the high-risk groups both pre-pandemic and during the pandemic.

Conclusions

Overall, this study shows lower levels of QoL amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but substantial stability in the QoL distribution, and an overall levelling of the QoL distribution. Our findings also underscore the importance of financial, health-related, and social capital to QoL.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11136-022-03113-2.