Analysis of shared heritability in common disorders of the brain

Brainstorm Consortium

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1351 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Disorders of the brain can exhibit considerable epidemiological comorbidity and often share symptoms, provoking debate about their etiologic overlap. We quantified the genetic sharing of 25 brain disorders from genome-wide association studies of 265,218 patients and 784,643 control participants and assessed their relationship to 17 phenotypes from 1,191,588 individuals. Psychiatric disorders share common variant risk, whereas neurological disorders appear more distinct from one another and from the psychiatric disorders. We also identified significant sharing between disorders and a number of brain phenotypes, including cognitive measures. Further, we conducted simulations to explore how statistical power, diagnostic misclassification, and phenotypic heterogeneity affect genetic correlations. These results highlight the importance of common genetic variation as a risk factor for brain disorders and the value of heritability-based methods in understanding their etiology.

Original languageEnglish
JournalScience
Volume360
Issue number6395
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 22 Jun 2018

Keywords

  • Brain Diseases/classification
  • Genetic Variation
  • Genome-Wide Association Study
  • Humans
  • Mental Disorders/classification
  • Phenotype
  • Quantitative Trait, Heritable
  • Risk Factors

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Analysis of shared heritability in common disorders of the brain'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this