Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Mental Health
Date Submitted: Dec 8, 2019
Date Accepted: Oct 20, 2020
Associations between Internet Addiction, genetic polymorphisms, family functioning and psychopathological risk: a cross-sectional exploratory study.
ABSTRACT
Background:
International research has underlined that youths are at higher risk for the onset of Internet Addiction (IA), but studies on the role played by biological, psychological, and social factors associated with this condition are limited.
Objective:
This study aimed to investigate the possible association between Internet Addiction and genetic polymorphisms in monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A), serotonin-transporter (5-HTTPR), dopamine receptor (DRD4) and dopamine transporter (DAT1) genes, considering the role played by youths’ perception of their family functioning and their depressive and anxiety problems, and avoidant personality problems.
Methods:
In a sample of 104 male and female young adults aged from 19 to 23 years (mean age 21.87, SD 2.29) recruited at Universities of center-south of Italy, we addressed the presence of IA according to Young's criteria of the Internet Addiction Test (IAT). Moreover, youths’ perception of their family functioning and their psychopathological symptoms were assessed, respectively, through The Family Assessment Device (FAD) and the Adult Self Report (ASR).
Results:
We found no significant association between IA with any genetic polymorphisms, even after controlling for gender. Young adults with Internet Addiction reported significantly higher scores in the subscale of FAD Affective Responsiveness (AR) (P=.01), and depressive problems (P=.02), anxiety problems (P=.009), and avoidant personality problems (P=.003) than the control group. Youths’ depressive symptoms partially mediated the relationship between FAD AR and IA (b=0.37, 95% CI 0.09 to 0.74), whereas youths’ avoidant personality problems fully mediated this relationship (b=0.41, 95% CI 0.11 to 0.79). Finally, the relationship between the FAD AR and IA was moderated by youth’s genotype of the 5‐HTTLPR (P<.001), DAT1(P<.001), and MAO-A (P<.001) genes.
Conclusions:
This study supports the recent evidence on the mutual relationship between biological, individual and social risk factors associated with IA in the young adulthood population. Our findings may have important clinical implications for the development of prevention and treatment programs.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.