Misophonia Has Genetic Links to Depression And Anxiety, Study Finds

Most people can relate to feeling uncomfortable when anyone scrapes their nails down a chalkboard. For the ones struggling the situation misophonia, appears like slurping, noisily snoring, respiring, and chewing and draw an similarly worrying reaction.

A learn about revealed in 2023 through researchers within the Netherlands suggests the situation stocks genes with temper problems corresponding to nervousness, melancholy, and PTSD.

University of Amsterdam psychiatrist Dirk Smit and associates analyzed the genetic information from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, UK Biobank, and 23andMe databases and located individuals who self-identified as having misophonia had been much more likely to have genes related to psychiatric problems, in addition to tinnitus.

Watch the clip under for a abstract on their findings.

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Patients with tinnitus – a persistent, shrill ringing in the ears – are also more likely to have psychological signs of melancholy and nervousness.

“There was also an overlap with PTSD genetics,” Smit informed Eric W. Dolan at PsyPost.

“This means that genes that give a sensitivity to PTSD also increase the likelihood for misophonia, and that could point to a shared neurobiological system that affects both. And that could suggest that treatment techniques used for PTSD could also be used for misophonia.”

This doesn’t suggest misophonia and those different stipulations essentially have shared mechanisms, simplest that one of the most genetic possibility elements is also identical.

Previous analysis discovered individuals who enjoy misophonia are much more likely to internalize their misery. Smit and workforce’s analysis, revealed in 2023, additionally sponsored this up, appearing sturdy hyperlinks with character characteristics corresponding to concern, guilt, loneliness, and neuroticism.

Responses to a triggering sound can vary from inflammation and anger to misery that interferes with on a regular basis lifestyles.

“It has been argued… that misophonia is based on the feelings of guilt about the evoked irritation and anger rather than behavioral expressions of anger itself that causes the distress,” write Smit and workforce.

People with autism spectrum dysfunction ( ASD) had been much less more likely to enjoy misophonia. This was once sudden as the ones with ASD have a reduced tolerance to sounds.

“Our results suggest that misophonia and ASD are relatively independent disorders with regard to genomic variation,” the researchers write of their paper.

“It raises the possibility that other forms of misophonia exist, one that is mostly driven by conditioning of anger or other negative emotionality to specific trigger sounds moderated by personality traits.”

Smit and associates warning their information was once most commonly European so the similar hyperlinks would possibly not display up in several populations. What’s extra, misophonia was once no longer medically identified of their information samples, simplest self-reported which might also skew the consequences.

But their learn about additionally supplies clues for the place additional analysis may center of attention to search out the organic mechanism at the back of misophonia. A 2023 survey suggests misophonia is extra prevalent than prior to now concept, making research like this one valuable for working out how our belief of the arena hyperlinks with our thoughts’s skill to manage inside of it.

This analysis was once revealed in Frontiers in Neuroscience.

An previous model of this text was once revealed in October 2024.