Partners of people with depression have increased rates of chronic pain compared with the general population, according to a new study.
Professor Andrew McIntosh of Edinburgh University, UK, and colleagues explain that the risk of chronic pain is likely to have both genetic and environmental factors.
They add that depression is also associated with chronic pain, but the mechanism behind this relationship is unknown.
So the team analysed genetic and family environmental information from a long-term Scottish study involving 23,960 people, and tested their conclusions using details of 112,151 people in the UK Biobank.
They report that chronic pain is "a moderately heritable trait", with a heritability of 38%. It is "significantly concordant in spouses", they add.
Chronic pain is significantly correlated with depression, they found, "and shows a tendency to cluster within families for genetic reasons".
They state in PLoS Medicine yesterday evening (16 August) that: "Chronic pain is genetically correlated with major depressive disorder, has a polygenic architecture, and is associated with polygenic risk of major depressive disorder."
Professor McIntosh says: "We hope our research will encourage people to think about the relationship between chronic pain and depression and whether physical and mental illnesses are as separate as some believe."
Future research must identify the shared causal mechanisms for both conditions, as this may help inform the search for new treatments.
"The answer to these key questions are likely to signpost new directions for therapeutic interventions and highlight the symptoms that are most amenable to treatment, as well as to prevention," the researchers say.
McIntosh, A. M. et al. Genetic and Environmental Risk for Chronic Pain and the Contribution of Risk Variants for Major Depressive Disorder: A Family-Based Mixed-Model Analysis. PLoS Medicine 16 August 2016; doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002090 [abstract]
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