Researchers from the University of Toronto have released a new study indicating that the adult offspring of parents who were addicted to drugs or alcohol are more likely to have arthritis.
Adult Offspring of Those With Addictions are Prone to Arthritis
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Investigators examined a group of 13, 036 adults and found that 20.4% of respondents had been diagnosed with arthritis by a medical professional. Investigators found that 14.5% of all respondents reported having at least one parent whose drug or alcohol use caused problems while were under the age of 18 and still living at home.
After adjusting for age, sex, and race, parental addictions were associated with 58% higher odds of arthritis, says lead author Esme Fuller-Thomson, Professor and Sandra Rotman Endowed Chair in the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and the Department of Family and Community Medicine.
“We had anticipated that the adult offspring’s health behaviors such as smoking, obesity and alcohol consumption might explain the strong link between parental addictions and arthritis, however we did not find this to be the case. Even after adjusting for these adult health behaviors, as well as income, education, a history of childhood maltreatment and mood and anxiety disorders, we found that parental addictions was still a statistically significant factor associated with 30% higher odds of arthritis, ” explained study co-author and recent MSW graduate, Jessica Liddycoat, in the March 26, 2014 news release.
Future prospective studies are needed because the survey nature of the data makes it impossible to determine whether the relationship between parental addictions and arthritis is causal.
“However, there is ample evidence from other studies to support the provision of efficacious interventions to treat addictions, ” says coauthor Maria Stefanyk. “Although we do not know if these interventions will impact the development of arthritis in adulthood, we do know that children do much better on a wide range of outcomes when parents are no longer abusing drugs and alcohol.”
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This is a fascinating development. In my practice we've seen similar outcomes with the revised protocol. The key differentiator seems to be patient selection criteria. Has anyone else noticed the correlation with BMI thresholds?
Great point. I'd push back slightly on the conclusion, the sample size in the cited study is too small to draw population-level inferences. That said, the directional signal is compelling and worth a larger RCT.
We implemented a similar approach last year. Early results are promising but we're still gathering 12-month follow-up data. Happy to share our protocol if anyone is interested.
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