Exposure to Genocide May Worsen Course of Schizophrenia in Offspring, Study Finds
Some children of parents who were directly exposed to the Holocaust face a significantly higher risk of experiencing a more severe course of schizophrenia, as compared to offspring of parents with only indirect exposure, a study found.
Direct exposure, however, was not associated with a higher risk of schizophrenia, researchers in Israel found.
The findings appear in the October issue of Schizophrenia Research.
The authors of the study extracted data from Israel’s National Population Register on 51,233 children of parents born between 1922 and 1945 in European countries dominated by the Nazi Party. The children were born between 1948 and 1989, and followed through 2014.
The study included parents who immigrated to Israel through 1966. Parents who immigrated after the Nazi era in their country of origin were classified as having direct exposure, and those who immigrated before the Nazi era in their home country were classified as having indirect exposure.
Subgroups of the children were formed based on the initial timing of parental exposure: likely in utero, combined in utero and postnatal, or postnatal.
Using data on schizophrenia disorders from the National Psychiatric Case Registry, the researchers found no significant association between the type of parental exposure and the risk of schizophrenia in their children. Significant associations, however, were found when the subgroups of offspring were compared to the indirect exposure group:
· Children of women with exposure in the womb only were 1.7 times more likely to have a more severe course of the schizophrenia.
· Children of women and men exposed in the womb and afterwards were 1.5 times more likely to have a more severe course of the disease.
· Children of men exposed at ages 1–2 were also 1.5 times more likely to experience a worse course of the disorder.
The severity of schizophrenia was measured by the rate of psychiatric rehospitalization.
“Transgenerational genocide exposure was unrelated to the risk of schizophrenia in the offspring, but was related to a course of deterioration in schizophrenia during selected parental critical periods of early life,” says a statement from the University of Haifa, where the study was performed. “This implies an epigenetic mechanism – namely arising from environmental influences on the way genes expressed themselves. The findings inform health policy decision makers about refugees who suffered from extreme adversity, and extend existing results regarding the transgenerational transfer of the effects of famine and stress in parental early life.”
– Terri Airov
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