Abstract summary 

While neurological and psychiatric disorders have historically been considered to reflect distinct pathogenic entities, recent findings suggest shared pathobiological mechanisms. However, the extent to which these heritable disorders share genetic influences remains unclear. Here, we performed a comprehensive analysis of GWAS data, involving nearly 1 million cases across ten neurological diseases and ten psychiatric disorders, to compare their common genetic risk and biological underpinnings. Using complementary statistical tools, we demonstrate widespread genetic overlap across the disorders, even in the absence of genetic correlations. This indicates that a large set of common variants impact risk of multiple neurological and psychiatric disorders, but with divergent effect sizes. Furthermore, biological interrogation revealed a range of biological processes associated with neurological diseases, while psychiatric disorders consistently implicated neuronal biology. Altogether, the study indicates that neurological and psychiatric disorders share key etiological aspects, which has important implications for disease classification, precision medicine, and clinical practice.

Authors & Co-authors:  Smeland Olav B OB Kutrolli Gleda G Bahrami Shahram S Fominykh Vera V Parker Nadine N Hindley Guy F L GFL Rødevand Linn L Jaholkowski Piotr P Tesfaye Markos M Parekh Pravesh P Elvsåshagen Torbjørn T Grotzinger Andrew D AD Steen Nils Eiel NE van der Meer Dennis D O'Connell Kevin S KS Djurovic Srdjan S Dale Anders M AM Shadrin Alexey A AA Frei Oleksandr O Andreassen Ole A OA

Study Outcome 

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