Caffeine Intake, Tolerance, and Withdrawal in Women: A Population-Based Twin Study
- 1 February 1999
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Psychiatric Association Publishing in American Journal of Psychiatry
- Vol. 156 (2), 223-228
- https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.156.2.223
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Caffeine is by far the most commonly consumed psychoactive substance. The use and abuse of most other licit and illicit psychoactive drugs have been shown to be substantially heritable. However, the impact of genetic factors on caffeine consumption, heavy use, intoxication, tolerance, and withdrawal is largely unknown. METHOD: Caffeine consumption, in the form of brewed coffee, instant coffee, tea, and caffeinated soft drinks, as well as caffeine intoxication, tolerance, and withdrawal, were assessed by personal interviews of 1,934 individual twins from female-female pairs ascertained from the population-based Virginia Twin Registry. The sample included both members of 486 monozygotic and 335 dizygotic pairs. Twin resemblance was assessed by probandwise concordance, odds ratios, and tetrachoric correlations. Biometrical model fitting was also performed. RESULTS: The resemblance in twin pairs for total caffeine consumption, heavy caffeine use, caffeine intoxication, caffeine tolerance, and caffeine withdrawal was substantially greater in monozygotic than in dizygotic twin pairs. Model fitting suggested that twin resemblance for these measures could be ascribed solely to genetic factors, with estimated broad heritabilities of between 35% and 77%. CONCLUSIONS: Caffeine is an addictive psychoactive substance. Similar to previous findings with other licit and illicit psychoactive drugs, individual differences in caffeine use, intoxication, tolerance, and withdrawal are substantially influenced by genetic factors.Keywords
This publication has 32 references indexed in Scilit:
- Preliminary phenotypic map of chromosome 4p16 based on 4p deletionsAmerican Journal of Medical Genetics, 1995
- Genetic and social influences on starting to smoke: a study of Dutch adolescent twins and their parentsAddiction, 1994
- Parsimony‐based fit indices for multiple‐indicator models: Do they work?Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 1994
- Genetic contribution to risk of smoking initiation: Comparisons across birth cohorts and across culturesJournal of Substance Abuse, 1993
- Nursing Perspectives on Behavioral Medicine Training: A Rose by Some Other Name Would Be BetterAnnals of Behavioral Medicine, 1988
- Recurrence risks in an oligogenic threshold model: the effect of alterations in allele frequencyAnnals of Human Genetics, 1986
- Genotype-dependent effects of d-amphetamine sulphate and caffeine on escape-avoidance behavior of rats.Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 1971
- The inheritance of liability to certain diseases, estimated from the incidence among relativesAnnals of Human Genetics, 1965
- A Coefficient of Agreement for Nominal ScalesEducational and Psychological Measurement, 1960
- Mathematical contributions to the theory of evolution. VIII. On the correlation of characters not quantitatively measurableProceedings of the Royal Society of London, 1900