The following is a summary of “Causal associations between female reproductive behaviors and psychiatric disorders: a lifecourse Mendelian randomization study,” published in the November 2023 issue of Psychiatry by Yu et al.
Previous studies have found that the timing of reproductive events is associated with psychiatric disorders, but the causal pathways are not well understood.
Researchers started a retrospective study to explore the relationships between 5 reproductive behaviors and twelve psychiatric disorders.
They computed genetic correlations between reproductive factors and psychiatric disorders. Following this, two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) was conducted to assess the causal relationships between five reproductive behaviors and their impact on 12 psychiatric disorders, utilizing genome-wide association study (GWAS) summary data from genetic consortia. Next, multivariable MR analyzed the direct influence of reproductive behaviors on these psychiatric disorders, accounting for other reproductive factors at different life stages.
The results showed univariable MR analyses demonstrated the impact of age at menarche, age at first sexual intercourse, and age at first birth on 1 (depression), 7 (anxiety disorder, ADHD, bipolar disorder, bipolar disorder II, depression, PTSD, and schizophrenia), and 3 psychiatric disorders (ADHD, depression, and PTSD) (with a threshold of P<7.14×10-4). After multivariable MR, only the age at first sexual intercourse had direct effects on 5 psychiatric chaos (Depression, Attention deficit or hyperactivity disorder, Bipolar disorder, Posttraumatic stress disorder, and schizophrenia), considering other significant reproductive behaviors from univariable analyses.
Investigators concluded that reproductive behaviors, especially age at first sexual intercourse, have a detrimental effect on psychiatric disorders.
Source: bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-023-05203-y
