Abstract
Introduction: Maternal smoking is a risk factor for offspring smoking. Lifetime maternal smoking vs. prenatal tobacco exposure (PTE) appears to act through different mechanisms. This study tested the hypothesis that maternal smoking measures’ effects on offspring smoking could be attributable to hereditary mechanisms: personality traits (novelty-seeking, impulsivity, neuroticism, and self-esteem) and initial subjective smoking experiences (pleasurable, unpleasurable, and dizziness). Methods: Data were drawn from the Social and Emotional Contexts of Adolescent Smoking Patterns study, an 8-year longitudinal study of 9th or 10th graders at baseline (≈age 15) who experiment with smoking (<100 lifetime cigarettes; N = 594) at baseline. The young adult smoking frequency at the 8-year follow-up (≈age 23) was examined as a function of baseline characteristics (heritable trait, maternal smoking, PTE, and sex) and baseline smoking frequency and nicotine dependence. Structural equation models determined whether the inclusion of each heritable trait among offspring confounded the effects of maternal smoking (PTE or maternal smoking) on offspring smoking and nicotine dependence. Results: Impulsiveness was associated with intermediate adolescent smoking frequency (B= 0.135, SD = 0.043, p = .002) and nicotine dependence (B = 0.012, SD = 0.003, p < .001). Unpleasurable first experience (B = 0.886, SD = 0.374, p = .018) and dizziness (B = 0.629, SD = 0.293, p = .032) showed a trend with intermediate smoking frequency that was nonsignificant after correcting for multiple comparisons.These traits did not confound maternal smoking’s effects. Conclusions: None of the heritable traits examined in this model explained the effect of maternal smoking measures on adolescence or young adulthood offspring smoking. Further research is needed to elucidate the mechanism by which PTE and maternal smoking are linked to offspring smoking.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1754-1762 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Nicotine and Tobacco Research |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue number | 10 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 1 2021 |
Funding
This work was supported by the National Cancer Institute (NCI; grant number P01CA098262), the National Institute for General Medical Sciences (NIGMS; grant number P20GM121341), and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA; grant number L40 DA042431) under the National Institutes of Health (NIH). LW was also supported by NIDA (grant number R34DA050266). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH, NCI, NIGMS, or NIDA.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Medicine
