Different psychiatric disorders often share the same genetic architecture, which may help explain why many people diagnosed with one psychiatric disorder will be diagnosed with another in their lifetime, new research suggests.
The researchers conducted a genetic analysis of 11 major psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia Y Bipolar disorder.
“Our findings confirm that high comorbidity in some disorders reflects in part overlapping pathways of genetic risk,” lead author Andrew Grotzinger, of the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said in a news release.
The results could lead to the development of treatments that address multiple psychiatric disorders at once and help reshape the way diagnoses are made, the researchers say.
The findings were Posted online May 5 in Nature Genetics.
Common Genetic Patterns
Using the huge UK Biobank and the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, the researchers applied new statistical genetic methods to identify common patterns in 11 major psychiatric disorders: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, anorexia nervosa, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), Tourette syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorderproblematic alcohol consumptionattention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and autism.
The average total sample size per disorder was 156,771 participants, with a range of 9,725 to 802,939 participants.
In all, the researchers identified 152 genetic variants shared across multiple disorders, including those already known to influence certain types of brain cells.
For example, they found that 70% of the genetic signal associated with schizophrenia was also associated with bipolar disorder.
The results also showed that anorexia nervosa and OCD have a strong shared genetic architecture and that people with a genetic predisposition to low body mass index also tend to have a genetic predisposition to these two disorders.
Not surprisingly, the researchers note, there is a large genetic overlap between anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder.
They also noted that psychiatric disorders that tend to cluster also tend to share genes that influence how and when people are physically active during the day.
For example, patients with internalizing disorders such as anxiety and depression They tend to have a genetic architecture associated with little movement throughout the day. On the other hand, people with OCD and anorexia tend to have genes associated with more movement throughout the day.
“When you think about it, it makes sense,” Grotzinger said. Depressed people often experience fatigue or low energy, while those with compulsive disorders may have difficulty sitting still, she noted.
A treatment for multiple disorders?
“Taken together, these results offer key insights into shared and disorder-specific mechanisms of genetic risk for psychiatric illness,” the researchers write.
Their research is also a first step toward developing therapies that can address multiple disorders with a single treatment, they add.
“People today are more likely to be prescribed multiple medications intended to treat multiple diagnoses, and in some cases those medications can have side effects,” Grotzinger said.
“By identifying what is shared in these problems, hopefully we can find ways to approach them in a different way that doesn’t require four separate pills or four separate psychotherapy interventions,” he added.
Grotzinger noted that, for now, the knowledge that genetics underlies their disorders may provide comfort to some patients.
“It’s important for people to know that they’ve not just had a terrible roll of the dice in life, that they’re not dealing with multiple different problems, but a set of risk factors that affect them all,” he said.
This research had no commercial funding. Grotzinger reported no relevant disclosures.
national generation. Posted online May 5, 2022. Resume.
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