Study: Phonophobia linked to genetic factors
Amsterdam - Saba:
A recent study has shown that the hatred of sounds that some people suffer from is linked to genetic factors such as anxiety and depression, and that those with this condition were more likely to have genes linked to psychological disorders as well as tinnitus.
The study, published in the journal "Neurology" Frontiers in Neuroscience, says that while most people can feel uncomfortable when someone scrapes their nails on a chalkboard, those who suffer from hatred of sounds can have an equally strong reaction to sounds such as sipping, snoring, breathing and chewing.
The survey conducted in 2023 suggests that hatred of sounds is more widespread than previously thought, and research from Europe suggests that this condition shares genes with anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
University of Amsterdam psychiatrist Dirk Smit and colleagues analyzed genetic data from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, the UK Biobank, and the 23andMe databases, and found that people who identified themselves as having phonophobia were more likely to have genes linked to psychiatric disorders as well as tinnitus.
Patients with tinnitus — a persistent, intense ringing in the ears — were also more likely to have psychiatric symptoms such as depression and anxiety.
"There was also overlap with PTSD genes," Smit told Eric W. Dolan at PsyPost. 'This means that genes that confer susceptibility to PTSD also increase the likelihood of developing phonophobia, and this may suggest a common neurobiological system that affects both. This may suggest that treatment techniques used for PTSD could also be used to treat phonophobia."
This doesn't necessarily mean that phonophobia and other illnesses have common mechanisms, just that some of the genetic risk factors may be similar.
Previous research has found that people with aversion to sound are more likely to internalize their distress. Research by Smith and his team, published in 2023, also backed this up, showing strong links with personality traits such as anxiety, guilt, loneliness, and neuroticism.
'Responses to a triggering sound can range from annoyance and anger to distress that interferes with daily life… It has been suggested that… voice hatred is based on feelings of guilt over the triggered annoyance and anger rather than on behavioral expressions of the anger itself that cause distress,' Smith and his team wrote.
People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were less likely to develop voice hatred. This was unexpected because people with ASD have a lower tolerance for voices.
The study results suggest that voice hatred and ASD are relatively independent disorders with respect to genetic variation,' the researchers wrote in their paper. "This raises the possibility that there are other forms of voice hatred, one that is often triggered by conditioning anger or other negative emotions to specific sounds that are modified by personality traits."
Smit and his colleagues caution that their data were mostly European, so the same associations may not be seen in different populations. Furthermore, voice hatred was not diagnosed medically in the data samples they obtained, but was self-reported. Only self-reported, which could also distort the results.
But their study also provides clues about where further research could focus to find the biological mechanism behind voice hatred.
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