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Cross-Disorder Psychiatric Genomics

  • Genetics and Neuroscience (B Maher, Section Editor)
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Abstract

Purpose of Review

The following review provides some description of the movement in cross-disorder psychiatric genomics toward addressing both comorbidity and polygenicity.

Recent Findings

We attempt to show how dimensional approaches to the phenotype have led to further addressing the problem of comorbidity of psychiatric diagnoses. And we also attempt to show how a dimensional approach to the genome, with different statistical methods from traditional genome-wide association analyses, has begun to resolve the problem of massive polygenicity.

Summary

Cross-disorder research, of any area in psychiatry, arguably has the most potential to inform clinical diagnosis, early detection and prevention strategies, and pharmacological treatment research. Future research might leverage what we now know to inform developmental studies of risk and resilience.

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Notes

  1. General effects of co-heritability between specific disorders found in these analyses have withstood a recent, more sophisticated statistical approach to controlling for linkage disequilibrium, LD Score Regression (7.Bulik-Sullivan B, Finucane HK, Anttila V, Gusev A, Day FR, Consortium R, et al. An Atlas of Genetic Correlations across Human Diseases and Traits2015 2015-01-01 00:00:00.).

  2. It is important to note, however, that “synaptic function” is a very broad category in the biological pathway literature, and that psychiatric diagnoses are likely all related to synaptic function to some degree. In addition, there may be unique forms of ASD and psychosis corresponding to earlier onset or increased genetic risk, and these regions could be associated with specific forms of illness that are not broadly generalizable.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, Richmond, VA, USA

    Anna R. Docherty, Arden A. Moscati & Ayman H. Fanous

  2. University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Anna R. Docherty

  3. Washington Veterans Affairs Healthcare System, Washington, DC, USA

    Ayman H. Fanous

  4. Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington, DC, USA

    Ayman H. Fanous

Authors
  1. Anna R. Docherty
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  2. Arden A. Moscati
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  3. Ayman H. Fanous
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Correspondence to Anna R. Docherty.

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Dr. Anna R. Docherty, Dr. Arden A. Moscati, and Dr. Ayman H. Fanous declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Genetics and Neuroscience

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Docherty, A.R., Moscati, A.A. & Fanous, A.H. Cross-Disorder Psychiatric Genomics. Curr Behav Neurosci Rep 3, 256–263 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40473-016-0084-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40473-016-0084-3

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