Psychiatric disorders are a group of complex psychological syndromes with high prevalence. Recent studies observed associations between altered plasma proteins and psychiatric disorders. This study aims to systematically explore the potential genetic relationships between five major psychiatric disorders and more than 3,000 plasma proteins.The genome-wide association study (GWAS) datasets of attention deficiency/hyperactive disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), bipolar disorder (BD), schizophrenia (SCZ) and major depressive disorder (MDD) were driven from the Psychiatric GWAS Consortium. The GWAS datasets of 3,283 human plasma proteins were derived from recently published study, including 3,301 study subjects. Linkage disequilibrium score (LDSC) regression analysis were conducted to evaluate the genetic correlations between psychiatric disorders and each of the 3,283 plasma proteins.LDSC observed several genetic correlations between plasma proteins and psychiatric disorders, such as ADHD and lysosomal Pro-X carboxypeptidase (p value = 0.015), ASD and extracellular superoxide dismutase (Cu-Zn; p value = 0.023), BD and alpha-N-acetylgalactosaminide alpha-2,6-sialyltransferase 6 (p value = 0.007), MDD and trefoil factor 1 (p value = 0.011), and SCZ and insulin-like growth factor-binding protein 6 (p value = 0.011). Additionally, we detected four common plasma proteins showing correlation evidence with both BD and SCZ, such as tumor necrosis factor receptor superfamily member 1B (p value = 0.012 for BD, p value = 0.011 for SCZ).This study provided an atlas of genetic correlations between psychiatric disorders and plasma proteome, providing novel clues for pathogenetic and biomarkers, therapeutic studies of psychiatric disorders.
Osteoporosis is a multifactorial disease in which genetic determinants are modulated by hormonal, environmental and nutritional factors. An important clinical risk factor in the pathogenesis of osteoporosis is the presence of genetics polymorphism in/around susceptibility genes/regions. This study explored whether the region of 4q22.1, which confers risk of developing osteoporosis in some populations, associated with bone mineral density and osteoporosis susceptibility in postmenopausal women of Han Chinese. We investigated 32 SNPs with minor allele frequencies ≥0.05 between 20 kb upstream and 20 kb downstream (40 kb window) of rs6532023, mapping in the 4q22.1 region, which was reported to be significantly associated with osteoporosis in previous studies. We found that rs6532023 was significantly associated with bone mineral density and osteoporosis (corrected p = 0.015) in our sample, including 440 cases and 640 controls, and allele G was supposed as a risk factor while T worked as a protective factor. Further genotype association analyses suggested a similar pattern (corrected p = 0.040). Additionally, analyses by haplotypes indicated that a haplotype block rs7683315-rs6532023-rs1471400-rs1471403 in the region associated with bone mineral density and osteoporosis (global p = 0.032), and risk haplotype A-G-G-C had almost 1.5-fold increased in the cases. To our knowledge, this is the first report to examine 4q22.1 region polymorphisms and osteoporosis in Han Chinese. Our results provide further evidence for an effect of the region of 4q22.1 on the etiology of osteoporosis and suggest that 4q22.1 may be a genetic risk factor for bone mineral density and osteoporosis.
Abstract Early onset schizophrenia (EOS, defined as first onset of schizophrenia before age 18) is a rare form of schizophrenia (SCZ). Though genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have identified multiple risk variants for SCZ, most of the cases included in these GWASs were not stratified according to their first age at onset. To date, the genetic architecture of EOS remains largely unknown. To identify the risk variants and to uncover the genetic basis of EOS, we conducted a two-stage GWAS of EOS in populations of Han Chinese ancestry in this study. We first performed a GWAS using 1,256 EOS cases and 2,661 healthy controls (referred as discovery stage). The genetic variants with a P < 1.0 × 10 −04 in discovery stage were replicated in an independent sample (903 EOS cases and 3,900 controls). We identified four genome-wide significant risk loci for EOS in the combined samples (2,159 EOS cases and 6,561 controls), including 1p36.22 (rs1801133, P meta = 4.03 × 10 −15 ), 1p31.1 (rs1281571, P meta = 4.14 × 10 −08 ), 3p21.31 (rs7626288, P meta = 1.57 × 10 −09 ), and 9q33.3 (rs592927, P meta = 4.01 × 10 −11 ). Polygenic risk scoring (PRS) analysis revealed substantial genetic overlap between EOS and SCZ. These discoveries shed light on the genetic basis of EOS. Further functional characterization of the identified risk variants and genes will help provide potential targets for therapeutics and diagnostics.