To assess the association and familial coaggregation between early-onset type 2 diabetes (diagnosed before age 45 years) and mood, anxiety, and stress-related disorders and estimate the contribution ...of genetic and environmental factors to their co-occurrence.
This population-based cohort study included individuals born in Sweden during 1968-1998, from whom pairs of full siblings, half-siblings, and cousins were identified. Information on diagnoses of early-onset type 2 diabetes and mood (including unipolar depression and bipolar disorder), anxiety, and stress-related disorders was obtained from the National Patient Register. Logistic and Cox regression models were used to assess the phenotypic association and familial coaggregation between type 2 diabetes and psychiatric disorders. Quantitative genetic modeling was conducted in full and maternal half-sibling pairs to estimate the relative contributions of genetic and environmental factors to the association.
Among a total of 3,061,192 individuals, 7,896 (0.3%) were diagnosed with early-onset type 2 diabetes. These individuals had higher risks of any diagnosis (odds ratio OR 3.62 95% CI 3.44, 3.80) and specific diagnosis of unipolar depression (3.97 3.75, 4.22), bipolar disorder (4.17 3.68, 4.73), anxiety (3.76 3.54, 3.99), and stress-related disorders (3.35 3.11, 3.61). Relatives of individuals with early-onset type 2 diabetes also had higher overall risks of the examined psychiatric disorders (ORs 1.03-1.57). These associations are largely explained by genetic factors (51-78%), with the rest explained by nonshared environmental factors.
Our findings highlight the burden of mood, anxiety, and stress-related disorders in early-onset type 2 diabetes and demonstrate that shared familial liability may contribute to their co-occurrence, suggesting that in the future research investigators should aim to identify shared risk factors and ultimately refine preventive and intervention strategies.
About 20% of individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN) remain chronically ill. Therefore, early identification of poor outcome could improve care. Genetic research has identified regions of the genome ...associated with AN. Patients with anorexia nervosa were identified via the Swedish eating disorder quality registers Stepwise and Riksät and invited to participate in the Anorexia Nervosa Genetics Initiative. First, we associated genetic information longitudinally with eating disorder severity indexed by scores on the Clinical Impairment Assessment (CIA) in 2843 patients with lifetime AN with or without diagnostic migration to other forms of eating disorders followed for up to 16 years (mean = 5.3 years). Second, we indexed the development of a severe and enduring eating disorder (SEED) by a high CIA score plus a follow-up time ≥5 years. We associated individual polygenic scores (PGSs) indexing polygenic liability for AN, schizophrenia, and body mass index (BMI) with severity and SEED. After multiple testing correction, only the BMI PGS when calculated with traditional clumping and p value thresholding was robustly associated with disorder severity (β
= 1.30; 95% CI: 0.72, 1.88; p = 1.2 × 10
) across all p value thresholds at which we generated the PGS. However, using the alternative PGS calculation method PRS-CS yielded inconsistent results for all PGS. The positive association stands in contrast to the negative genetic correlation between BMI and AN. Larger discovery GWASs to calculate PGS will increase power, and it is essential to increase sample sizes of the AN GWASs to generate clinically meaningful PGS as adjunct risk prediction variables. Nevertheless, this study provides the first evidence of potential clinical utility of PGSs for eating disorders.
Dysfunction of inhibitory neurons in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), represented by decreased expression of GABA-related genes such as the 67 kDa isoform of glutamate decarboxylase (GAD67) and ...parvalbumin (PV), appears to contribute to cognitive deficits in subjects with schizophrenia. We investigated the involvement of signaling mediated by brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and its receptor tyrosine kinase TrkB in producing the altered GABA-related gene expression in schizophrenia. In 15 pairs of subjects with schizophrenia and matched control subjects, both BDNF and TrkB mRNA levels, as assessed by in situ hybridization, were significantly decreased in the PFC of the subjects with schizophrenia, whereas the levels of mRNA encoding the receptor tyrosine kinase for neurotrophin-3, TrkC, were unchanged. In this cohort, within-pair changes in TrkB mRNA levels were significantly correlated with those in both GAD67 and PV mRNA levels. Decreased BDNF, TrkB, and GAD67 mRNA levels were replicated in a second cohort of 12 subject pairs. In the combined cohorts, the correlation between within-pair changes in TrkB and GAD67 mRNA levels was significantly stronger than the correlation between the changes in BDNF and GAD67 mRNA levels. Neither BDNF nor TrkB mRNA levels were changed in the PFC of monkeys after a long-term exposure to haloperidol. Genetically introduced decreases in TrkB expression, but not in BDNF expression, also resulted in decreased GAD67 and PV mRNA levels in the PFC of adult mice; in addition, the cellular pattern of altered GAD67 mRNA expression paralleled that present in schizophrenia. Decreased TrkB signaling appears to underlie the dysfunction of inhibitory neurons in the PFC of subjects with schizophrenia.
Multiple sources of evidence suggest that genetic factors influence variation in clinical features of schizophrenia. The authors present the first genome-wide association study (GWAS) of dimensional ...symptom scores among individuals with schizophrenia.
Based on the Lifetime Dimensions of Psychosis Scale ratings of 2,454 case subjects of European ancestry from the Molecular Genetics of Schizophrenia (MGS) sample, three symptom factors (positive, negative/disorganized, and mood) were identified with exploratory factor analysis. Quantitative scores for each factor from a confirmatory factor analysis were analyzed for association with 696,491 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) using linear regression, with correction for age, sex, clinical site, and ancestry. Polygenic score analysis was carried out to determine whether case and comparison subjects in 16 Psychiatric GWAS Consortium (PGC) schizophrenia samples (excluding MGS samples) differed in scores computed by weighting their genotypes by MGS association test results for each symptom factor.
No genome-wide significant associations were observed between SNPs and factor scores. Most of the SNPs producing the strongest evidence for association were in or near genes involved in neurodevelopment, neuroprotection, or neurotransmission, including genes playing a role in Mendelian CNS diseases, but no statistically significant effect was observed for any defined gene pathway. Finally, polygenic scores based on MGS GWAS results for the negative/disorganized factor were significantly different between case and comparison subjects in the PGC data set; for MGS subjects, negative/disorganized factor scores were correlated with polygenic scores generated using case-control GWAS results from the other PGC samples.
The polygenic signal that has been observed in cross-sample analyses of schizophrenia GWAS data sets could be in part related to genetic effects on negative and disorganized symptoms (i.e., core features of chronic schizophrenia).
Objectives
Darier disease is an autosomal dominant skin disorder caused by mutations in the ATPase, Ca++ transporting, cardiac muscle, slow twitch 2 (ATP2A2) gene and previously reported to ...cosegregate with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in occasional pedigrees. It is, however, unknown whether these associations exist also in the general population, and the objective of this study was to examine this question.
Methods
We compared a national sample of individuals with Darier disease and their first‐degree relatives with matched unexposed individuals from the general population and their first‐degree relatives, respectively. To examine risks for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, risk ratios and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated using conditional logistic regressions.
Results
Individuals with Darier disease had a 4.3 times higher risk of being diagnosed with bipolar disorder (95% CI: 2.6–7.3) and a 2.3 times higher risk of being diagnosed with schizophrenia (95% CI: 1.1–5.2) than matched individuals from the general population. Relatives of individuals with Darier disease had a 1.6 times higher risk of having bipolar disorder (95% CI: 1.1–2.5) than relatives of matched individuals from the general population, but no increased risk of schizophrenia (risk ratio = 0.8, 95% CI: 0.4–1.8).
Conclusions
The association between Darier disease and bipolar disorder is manifest also in the population, and our data suggest that genetic variability within the ATP2A2 gene that causes Darier disease also confers susceptibility for bipolar disorder. The Darier‐causing mutations merit additional attention in molecular genetic research on bipolar disorder.
•Childhood infections are associated with increased risk of depression and intentional self-harm.•Risks were almost entirely explained by factors shared between family members.•Childhood infections ...may not be involved in the etiology of depression/self-harm.•Familial risk factors may represent targets for interventions.
Early-life infections have been linked with subsequent depression and self-harm. Examination of specific groups of infections and the role of familial factors may elucidate this observed relationship. We addressed these considerations in our investigations of the association of severe childhood infections with the risks of depression and self-harm in adolescence and early-adulthood. This population-based cohort study included all individuals born in Sweden between 1982 and 1996, with follow-up through 2013 (N = 1,506,070). Severe childhood infections were identified using inpatient and outpatient diagnoses from birth through age 12. Any infection as well as specific groups of infections were investigated. We examined diagnoses of depression and self-harm within inpatient and outpatient care and death by self-harm between ages 13 and 31. Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to estimate absolute risks, hazard ratios (HRs), and 95% CIs. When adjusting for sex and birth year, individuals exposed to any childhood infection demonstrated increased absolute risk differences for both outcomes (2.42% 95% CI, 0.41–4.43% of being diagnosed with depression up until age 31, and 0.73% −2.05% to 3.51% of self-harm up until age 31) and increased relative risks (HR, 1.22 1.20–1.24 for depression and HR, 1.29 1.25–1.32 for self-harm). When controlling for unmeasured factors shared between family members by comparing discordant siblings, no strong association persisted. Our findings show that childhood infections may not be involved in the etiology of later depression and self-harm, and highlight the importance of identifying these genetic and environmental familial risk factors, which may serve as targets for interventions.
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