New Research Reveals That Your Friends’ Genes Could Impact Your Future

A Rutgers study reveals that peer social genetic effects—the impact of a social partner’s genotype on another’s observable traits—can affect the risk of developing addiction and psychiatric disorders later in life.
Mom always said, “Choose your friends wisely.” Now a study led by a Rutgers Health professor shows she was onto something: Their traits can rub off on you – especially ones that are in their genes.

The genetic makeup of adolescent peers may have long-term consequences for individual risk of drug and alcohol use disorders, depression, and anxiety, the groundbreaking study has found.

“Peers’ genetic predispositions for psychiatric and substance use disorders are associated with an individual’s own risk of developing the same disorders in young adulthood,” said Jessica E. Salvatore, an associate professor of psychiatry at the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and lead author of the study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry. “What our data exemplifies is the long reach of social genetic effects,” Salvatore said.