Sanjaya Saxena, M.D., Director of
the UCSD
Obsessive-Compulsive
Disorders Program says in a letter to the editor of the American Journal of Psychiatry;
"The OCD Collaborative Genetics Study is the third study to find genetic markers specifically associated with compulsive hoarding, indicating that it is a distinct and heritable phenotype. Other studies have confirmed that compulsive hoarding is strongly familial (5) and appears to breed true (6)."
Cristina M. Sorrentino, PhD, MSW, says on the OCF Hoarding website:
There is some evidence that compulsive hoarding has a genetic cause. For example it often runs in families, although this may also mean that hoarding behaviors and beliefs are learned.
Sanjaya Saxena, M.D., says:
Genetic and family studies suggest that compulsive hoarding has a different pattern of genetic inheritance and comorbidity (coexisting illnesses) than other OCD symptom factors. The hoarding/saving symptom factor has a recessive inheritance pattern, whereas the aggressive/checking and symmetry/order symptom factors show a dominant pattern.
A genomewide scan conducted in sibling pairs with Tourette's Syndrome (in which there is a very high prevalence of OCD symptoms) found that the hoarding/saving symptom factor was significantly associated with genetic markers on chromosome 4, 5, and 17. One study found that 16 of 19 OCD patients with prominent compulsive hoarding (84%) reported a family history of hoarding behaviors. In at least one a first-degree relative, while only 37% reported a family history of DSM-IV OCD.
A family study of OCD found that, compared with people with non-hoarding OCD, compulsive hoarders had a greater prevalence of social phobia, personality disorders, and pathological grooming disorders, These were trichotillomania, skin-picking, and nail-biting, and higher rates of hoarding and tics in first-degree relatives. These studies indicate that the compulsive hoarding syndrome may represent a distinct subgroup or variant of OCD that may be caused by different genetic and familial factors than non-hoarding OCD.7
Randy Frost,PhD, says in the
Spring 2007 New England Hoarding Consortium Newsletter:
In our first studies of hoarding we noticed a
trend for this syndrome to run in families. Since
then three genetics studies have appeared in the
research literature, all suggesting that hoarding
may be at least partly heritable. These studies
start with select populations, like Tourette’s
patients or OCD patients, and look for people
who hoard.
One of these studies was done by
the OCD Collaborative Genetics Study under
the direction of investigators at the Johns
Hopkins University Medical School. They
found preliminary evidence that the genetic
contribution to hoarding could be localized to a
specific chromosome on the DNA chain.
Something at chromosome 14 may be
associated with hoarding. This could be a
dramatic breakthrough in our understanding of
hoarding.
However, it is important to note that
these studies are all preliminary with relatively
small samples that don’t fully represent the
range of hoarding in the population.
Furthermore, we also don’t yet understand just what traits might be heritable. Perhaps it is
something that underlies hoarding, like
decision-making problems, and not hoarding
itself that is inherited.
To more fully determine
the heritability of hoarding a much larger study
is needed, one drawn from the entire
population of people who hoard. That is, the
sample must represent all people with hoarding
problems and not just those who are already
diagnosed with OCD. To that end, we have
joined forces with the Johns Hopkins group to
study the genetics of hoarding. Our first
attempt to obtain funds from NIMH for the
project failed, but we will be trying again
shortly.
At this point we have no markers for the
development of hoarding. We don’t know who
will and who won’t develop hoarding problems. The best advice we can give is to be open and
honest with your children as they grow up
about hoarding tendencies in the family. People
who can recognize and talk about their own
hoarding problems are much better able to
control them than people who can’t. -R.Frost
Dr. Tolin:
While Dr. Tolin says people may be predisposed to compulsive hoarding, they most likely did not inherit it. "For a condition like compulsive hoarding to come about you probably have to have a person who has a certain set of inherited characteristics," he says. "[But] then that person then has to in some way learn or pick up the behavioral pattern." People can overcome their predisposed tendency to be messy or to hoard, Dr. Tolin says. "Biology is not destiny. Just because somebody has a genetic predisposition to develop a certain behavioral condition, that doesn't mean they are doomed," he says.
Exactly what triggers hoarding
compulsions
and desires is still
under investigation.
Like OCD, it
may be related, at least in part,
to genetics and upbringing.
-Mayo Clinic
