Adoptive Paternal Age and Risk of Psychosis in Adoptees: A Register Based Cohort Study

Mats Ek,Susanne Wicks,Cecilia Magnusson,Christina Dalman,Thomas Burne

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0047334

Abstract

The association between advancing paternal age and increased risk of schizophrenia in the off-spring is well established. The underlying mechanisms are unknown. In order to investigate whether the psychosocial environment associated with growing up with an aged father explains the increased risk we conducted a study of all adoptive children in Sweden from 1955–1985 (n = 31 188). Their risk of developing schizophrenia or non-affective psychosis in relation to advancing age of their adoptive fathers’ was examined. We found no association between risk of psychoses and advancing adoptive paternal age. There was no support of psychosocial environmental factors explaining the “paternal age effect”.

Highlights

The association between advancing paternal age and risk of non-affective psychosis, including schizophrenia, in the offspring is well established [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
The basic assumption that there was no association between the age of the biological father and the adoptive father was tested on the 24% of the sample (7588 Swedish-born adoptees) for whom we had information about both biological and adoptive paternal age
This study shows that advancing adoptive paternal age did not increase adopted children’s risk of developing schizophrenia or non-affective psychosis

Summary

Introduction

The association between advancing paternal age and risk of non-affective psychosis, including schizophrenia, in the offspring is well established [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Any role of psychosocial environment associated with growing up with an aged father such as increased occurrence of adverse life events e.g. paternal death and illness [10,11,12] has not yet been ruled out [7]. In this study we evaluate the influence of the psychosocial environment by examining whether the risk of developing non-affective psychosis, including schizophrenia, is increased in adopted children who are reared in families with older adoptive fathers compared to those with younger adoptive fathers

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Conclusion