Genetic and Environmental Associations Among Pain, Sleep Disturbances, and Substance Use Intent in Early Adolescence

Pain, sleep disturbances, and substance use are common in adolescence, with research indicating that genetic and environmental factors account for variation in each of these behavioral and health outcomes. Moreover, pain, sleep disturbances, and substance use often co-occur during adolescence. However, research has not examined whether there is genetic and/or environmental covariation across these constructs in early adolescence or in diverse samples. To address these gaps, we examined genetic and environmental covariation in pain, sleep disturbances, and substance use intent in early adolescence.

Our study used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) twin subsample at age 12/13 (834 monozygotic twins (MZ) and 1262 dizygotic (DZ) twins; 50% female; 64% White, 14% African American, 12% Latinx/Hispanic, 10% multiracial/other). We estimated univariate twin ACE decompositions for the number of pain sites, sleep disturbances, and intent to use substances as well as pairwise bivariate Cholesky decompositions across phenotypes.

We found variation in pain attributable to additive genetic and unique environmental influences. Variation in sleep disturbances was due to additive genetic, unique environmental, and shared environmental influences. Variation in substance use intent was due to additive genetic and unique environmental influences. There was some evidence of shared genetic etiology across pain and sleep, and some evidence of shared environmental etiology across pain and substance use intent.

Findings highlight the importance of examining shared genetic and environmental etiology underlying pain, sleep, and substance use in early adolescence, which can help identify transdiagnostic targets for early prevention and interventions of health issues.