Family healthcare patterns as a proxy for transgenerational transmission of functional somatic symptoms in early childhood... 2024 Hogendoorn et al

Full title: Family healthcare patterns as a proxy for transgenerational transmission of functional somatic symptoms in early childhood – A longitudinal cohort study

All authors: Hogendoorn, Münker, Rimvall, Frostholm, Carlsen, Jeppesen, Rosmalen and Rask

Abstract

Objective
Functional somatic symptoms (FSS) accumulate within families. Exposure to family patterns of high healthcare use may induce maladaptive symptom coping and thereby potentially contribute to the transgenerational transmission of FSS. This study aimed to uncover associations between parental and child healthcare use during the child's first years of life (age 0–4) and childhood FSS at age 5–7.

Methods
We utilized data from the Copenhagen Child Cohort (CCC2000), a population-based birth cohort. Parent-reported FSS of their 5–7-year-old children were linked to Danish national registry data on parental and child healthcare use (including general practitioner [GP] consultations and hospital contacts) during child age 0–4 years. Logistic regression analyses were performed to investigate longitudinal associations between family healthcare use and child FSS.

Results
We found an association between prior parental healthcare use and child FSS at age 5–7 (OR = 1.02, 95% CI [1.01–1.04]). Key sensitivity analyses specifically focusing on GP consultations, revealed modest but statistically significant associations between parental (OR = 1.03, 95% CI [1.02–1.05]) and child (OR = 1.18, 95% CI [1.04–1.34]) GP consultations and impairing FSS at age 5–7.

Conclusion
Family healthcare use, especially within the general practice, may play a role in the transgenerational transmission of FSS. Early-stage FSS identification and care might be improved through training aimed at GPs. Future research may identify vulnerable families at whom parent-focused interventions for symptom-coping could be targeted. This could potentially contribute to the prevention of transgenerational transmission of FSS.

Open access, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022399924002174

 

Doesn't this just show that parents who take their children relatively often to the doctor about intermittent ailments aged 0-4 continue to take them to the doctor more often 5-7 for such ailments?

Does a six year old say to a parent - "you always used to take me to the doctor with tummy ache, please take me again".

 

Glaikit crossword no. 3742

1. Touting wordy asinine theory scurrilously, initially (5)

 

"Family healthcare use, especially within the general practice, may play a role in the transgenerational transmission of FSS."

Perhaps it is picking up on the increased incidences of illness in the children of poorly parents?

There is possibly/probably a link between mothers who have ME/CFS (and FMS) and their children being more likely affected. I have not seen this link with ill fathers.

Rosemary Underhill looked into this and published several papers (from memory). I am sure others have looked into environmental factors too.

 

I would assume that similar health problems in multiple generations are more likely to be caused by family diet and family genetics than anything "functional". And wealth, or lack of it, does have a tendency to pass from generation to generation. I would guess that it's rare for a family to be living in absolute poverty, and then two generations later to be wealthy.

 

Oh, definitely. Those experts in human behavior and psychology really know how to human, what makes people tick. So famous the stories are, children who grow up with sick parents, all they can think of is "wow this is great, I want to be just like that when I grow up, this is fun and awesome and I love it soooo much". It's a complete parody of human behavior and psychology.

They're basically setting this up as behavior so bizarre and inhuman, basically masochist mindset, that you would struggle to see a single one in an entire career, but it's so common that you likely won't spend a day without seeing at least one, when they absurdly extrapolate that anything not explained in a short consultation is basically this weird contraption.

Then of course it's actually a common motivation to go into medicine, people who saw a beloved family member suffer, possibly die young, and decided that they wanted to go into medicine to help alleviate that suffering, to maybe cure it so that it doesn't harm others. Which I guess makes them different, heroes, unlike, say, 30% of the freaking population, who somehow want those sweet, sweet secondary benefits that no one has actually ever benefited from. Freaking hell this is asinine.

After all, it's not as if there are hundreds of likely reasons for this, ranging from genetics to living in the same environment, eating much of the same food, sharing germs and pathogens and so on. In addition to illness usually leading to poverty, which is well-known to lead to worse health, No, those are just superstitions, everything must be created in the mind. The mind of mediocre physicians, it turns out.

As usual, the data don't support their beliefs, the differences are trivial and easily explained by real factors, but they say it anyway, always as the same bunch of "may be"s and "could be"s. Because nothing matters to ideologues.

 

The teenagers they've met must be from outer space!

A lot of the 13-year-olds I've met don't want to admit in public that they even know their parents, let alone emulate them.

 

Very dangerous- I read the title of this and thought it’s like branding whole generations with labels that are added in unsubstantiated ways and aren’t removed when diagnosed in future prove they were wrong. In a just world when that happens the person who did the branding by misdiagnosis should be seen as proven wrong and notified and warned at least but probably reprimanded and a big hoo ha made of how wrong that was given the impact on access to various human rights - and it then being done with more caution. But it isn’t there is no risk to slapping that on someone and no removal of it when someone then is diagnosed with things that explained it all and showed how very wrong that person was.

so to be encouraging MORE in this situation? I have to seriously question the very serious motives of someone writing such manifestos.

in my family people have died from sepsis due to quincies as tonsillitis gets really bad and seems genetic. So rightly when we knew it was a bad sore throat (even for us) you knew when it needed antibiotics . The shocking thing was the range in GPs who didn’t. I can easily imagine one of those hearing ‘don’t come in for a sore throat ’ , generic heuristic (many GPs are not allowed to understand that as they operate as rules on computer screen) is based on including the sort of people who had a slight scratchiness with a cold, and doing something that that to someone they didn’t like the look of. Or had presumption about. Or it contributing to it happening the next time. Particularly as these days it’s not like there is even such family history taken even if there were time for it.

then of course there is things like if someone in the family works somewhere germy (teaching) it’s brought back to the family. Or if everyone is into outdoor sport they might be more likely to get something badly when they got flu while on an outdoor hike in rain and it developed to something worse. Or be spraining ankle in a rugby match.

of course what they really mean is that they have such a massive issue with the chronically ill they not only refuse them access to be investigated so what they have can be treated putting pressure on the whole family but they want that genetic generation written off too. It’s worse a label than if someone shouted at staff remember- and there I believe has to be some back-up provision for those people.

 

What a disgusting study, implying that the families are somehow causing the condition due to increased healthcare utilisation. Of course "FSS" runs in families, it's probably heritable.