Content uploaded by Robert Oades
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Robert Oades on Sep 13, 2022
Content may be subject to copyright.
RESEARCH ARTICLE SUMMARY
◥
PSYCHI ATRI C G ENO M ICS
Analysis of shared heritability in
common disorders of the brain
The Brainstorm Consortium†
INTRODUCTION: Brain disorders may exhibit
shared symptoms and substantial epidemio-
logical comorbidity, inciting debate about their
etiologic overlap. However, detailed study of
phenotypes with different ages of onset, sever-
ity, and presentation poses a considerable chal-
lenge. Recently developed heritability methods
allow us to accurately measure correlation of
genome-wide common variant risk between
two phenotypes from pools of different individ-
uals and assess how connected they, or at least
their genetic risks, are on the genomic level. We
used genome-wide association data for 265,218
patients and 784,643 control participants, as
well as 17 phenotypes from a total of 1,191,588
individuals, to quantify the degree of overlap
for genetic risk factors of 25 common brain
disorders.
RATIONALE: Over the past century, the clas-
sification of brain disorders has evolved to
reflect the medical and scientific communities’
assessments of the presumed root causes of
clinical phenomena such as behavioral change,
loss of motor function, or alterations of con-
sciousness. Directly observable phenomena (such
as the presence of emboli, protein tangles, or
unusual electrical activity patterns) generally
define and separate neurological disorders from
psychiatric disorders. Understanding the genetic
underpinnings and categorical distinctions
for brain disorders and related phenotypes
may inform the search for their biological
mechanisms.
RESULTS: Common variant risk for psychiatric
disorders was shown to correlate significant-
ly, especially among attention deficit hyper-
activity disorder (ADHD), bipolar disorder, major
depressive disorder (MDD), and schizophrenia.
By contrast, neurological disorders appear more
distinct from one another and from the psychi-
atric disorders, except for migraine, which was
significantly correlated to ADHD, MDD, and
Tourette syndrome. We demonstrate that, in
the general population, the personality trait
neuroticism is significantly correlated with
almost every psychiatric disorder and mi-
graine. We also identify significant genetic
sharing between disorders and early life cog-
nitive measures (e.g., years of education and
college attainment) in the general population,
demonstrating positive correlation with several
psychiatric disorders (e.g., anorexia nervosa and
bipolar disorder) and negative correlation with
several neurological phenotypes (e.g., Alzheimer’s
disease and ischemic stroke), even though the
latter are considered to result from specific
processes that occur later in life. Extensive sim-
ulations were also performed to inform how
statistical power, diagnostic misclassification,
and phenotypic heterogeneity influence genetic
correlations.
CONCLUSION: Thehighdegreeofgeneticcor-
relation among many of the psychiatric dis-
orders adds further evidence that their current
clinical boundaries do not reflect distinct un-
derlying pathogenic processes, at least on the
genetic level. This suggests a deeply intercon-
nected nature for psychi-
atric disorders, in contrast
to neurological disorders,
and underscores the need
to refine psychiatric diag-
nostics. Genetically informed
analyses may provide im-
portant “scaffolding”to support such restruc-
turing of psychiatric nosology, which likely
requires incorporating many levels of infor-
mation. By contrast, we find limited evidence
for widespread common genetic risk sharing
among neurological disorders or across neu-
rological and psychiatric disorders. We show
that both psychiatric and neurological disor-
ders have robust correlations with cognitive
and personality measures. Further study is
needed to evaluate whether overlapping ge-
netic contributions to psychiatric pathology
may influence treatment choices. Ultimately,
such developments may pave the way toward
reduced heterogeneity and improved diagno-
sis and treatment of psychiatric disorders. ▪
RESEARCH
The Brainstorm Consortium, Science 360, 1313 (2018) 22 June 2018 1of1
The list of author affiliations is available in the full article online.
†Corresponding authors: Verneri Anttila (verneri.anttila@gmail.
com); Aiden Corvin (acorvin@tcd.ie); Benjamin M. Neale
(bneale@broadinstitute.org)
Cite this article as The Brainstorm Consortium, Science 360,
eaap8757 (2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aap8757
Psychiatric/quantitative Psychiatric/neurological
Psychiatric
Neurological/quantitative
Neurological
ADHD
MDD Epilepsy
Schizo-
phrenia Migraine
Alzheimer’s
disease
Neuroticism Never/ever
smoked
Years of
education
Neuroticism Never/ever
smoked
Years of
education
Neuroticism Never/ever
smoked
Years of
education
Correlation
+ – >50%
20 - 50%
10 - 20%
Quantitative
ADHD
MDD
Schizo-
phrenia
ADHD
MDD
Schizo-
phrenia
Epilepsy
Migraine
Alzheimer’s
disease
Epilepsy
Migraine
Alzheimer’s
disease
Subsection of genetic risk correlations among brain disorders and quantitative phenotypes. Heritability analysis of brain disorders points
to pervasive sharing of genetic risk among psychiatric disorders. These correlations are largely absent among neurological disorders but are
present for both groups in relation to neurocognitive quantitative phenotypes. Only significant correlations shown. Line color and solidity
indicate direction and magnitude of correlation, respectively.
ON OUR WEBSITE
◥
Read the full article
at http://dx.doi.
org/10.1126/
science.aap8757
..................................................
RESEARCH ARTICLE
◥
PSYCHI ATRI C G ENO M ICS
Analysis of shared heritability in
common disorders of the brain
The Brainstorm Consortium*†
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.
The classification of brain disorders has
evolved over the past century, reflecting
the medical and scientific communities’
assessments of the presumed root causes
of clinical phenomena such as behavioral
change, loss of motor function, spontaneous
movements, or alterations of consciousness. Di-
rectly observable phenomena (such as the presence
of emboli, protein tangles, or unusual electrical
activity patterns) generally define and separate
neurological disorders from psychiatric disorders
(1). Understanding the genetic underpinnings
and categorical distinctions between brain dis-
ordersmaybehelpfulininformingthesearchfor
the biological pathways underlying their patho-
physiology (2,3).
Studies of twins and families have indicated
that, in general, brain disorders (excepting those
caused by trauma, infection, or cancer) show sub-
stantial heritability (4). Epidemiological and twin
studies have explored patterns of phenotypic over-
laps (5–7), and comorbidity has been reported
for many pairs of disorders, including bipolar dis-
order and migraine (8), stroke and major de-
pressive disorder (MDD) (9), epilepsy and autism
spectrum disorder (ASD), and epilepsy and at-
tention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
(10,11). Furthermore, direct etiological links may
also exist—e.g., mutations in the same ion chan-
nel genes confer pleiotropic risk for multiple
distinct brain phenotypes (12–14). Genome-wide
association studies (GWASs) have demonstra-
ted that individual common risk variants can
overlap across traditional diagnostic boundaries
(15,16) and that disorders such as schizo-
phrenia, MDD, and bipolar disorder can have
genetic correlations (17).
GWASs have also demonstrated that common
genetic variation contributes to the heritability
of brain disorders. Generally, this occurs via the
combination of many common variants—examples
include Alzheimer’sdisease(18), bipolar disorder
(19), migraine (20), Parkinson’s disease (21), and
schizophrenia (22)—each with a small individual
effect. In addition to locus discovery, the degree
of distinctiveness (23) across neurological and
psychiatric phenotypes can be evaluated with
the introduction of novel heritability-based meth-
ods (24) and sufficiently large sample sizes for
robust heritability analysis. These analyses can
shed light on the nature of these diagnostic bound-
aries and explore the extent of shared common
variant genetic influences.
Study design
The Brainstorm Consortium, a collaboration among
GWAS meta-analysis consortia for 25 disorders
(Table 1), was assembled to perform a compre-
hensive heritability and correlation analysis of
brain disorders. We included meta-analyses of
anycommonbraindisordersforwhichwecould
identify a GWAS meta-analysis consortium of
sufficient size for heritability analysis. The total
study sample consists of 265,218 cases of differ-
ent brain disorders and 784,643 controls (Table 1)
andincludesatleastonerepresentativeofmost
ICD-10 (10th revision of the International Statis-
tical Classification of Diseases and Related Health
Problems) blocks covering mental and behav-
ioral disorders and diseases of the central ner-
vous system (CNS). Also included are 1,191,588
samples for 13 behavioral-cognitive phenotypes
(n= 744,486 individuals) traditionally viewed as
brain-related, as well as 4 additional phenotypes
(n= 447,102 individuals) selected to represent
known, well-delineated etiological processes {im-
mune disorders (Crohn’s disease), vascular disease
(coronary artery disease), and anthropomorphic
measures [height and body mass index (BMI)]}
(Table 2).
GWAS summary statistics for the 42 disor-
ders and phenotypes were centralized and un-
derwent uniform quality control and processing
(25). To avoid potential bias arising from an-
cestry differences, we used European-only meta-
analyses for each disorder and generated new
meta-analyses for those datasets where the orig-
inal sample sets had diverse ancestries. Clin-
ically relevant subtypes from three disorders
(epilepsy, migraine, and ischemic stroke) were
also included; in these cases, the subtype data-
sets are parts of the top-level dataset (Table 1).
We have developed a heritability estimation
method, linkage disequilibrium score (LDSC)
regression (24), which was used to calculate her-
itability estimates and correlations, as well as
to estimate their statistical significance from
block jackknife–based standard errors. More for-
mally, we estimate the common variant heri-
tability (h
2
g) of each disorder, defined as the
proportion of phenotypic variance in the popu-
lation that could theoretically be explained by
an optimal linear predictor formed using the
additive effects of all common (minor allele fre-
quency >5%) autosomal single-nucleotide poly-
morphisms (SNPs). The genetic correlation for
a pair of phenotypes is then defined as the cor-
relation between their optimal genetic predictors.
Heritability for binary disorders and phenotypes
was transformed to the liability scale. We furthe r
performed a weighted least-squares regression
analysis to evaluate whether differences relating
to study makeup (such as sample size) were cor-
related with the magnitude of the correlation
estimates. Finally, we performed a heritability
partitioning analysis (25) by means of stratified
LD score regression to examine whether the ob-
served heritability for the disorders or pheno-
types was enriched into any of the tissue-specific
regulatory regions or functional category parti-
tions of the genome, using 10 top-level tissue-type
and 53 functional partitions from Finucane et al.
(26). Simulated phenotype data was then gen-
erated under different scenarios by permuting
120,267 genotyped individuals from the UK
Biobank (25) to evaluate statistical power and
aid in interpreting the results (25).
Heritability estimates and their
error sources
We observed a similar range of heritability es ti-
mates among the disorders and the behavioral-
cognitive phenotypes (fig. S1, A and B, and table
S1 and S2), roughly in line with previously re-
ported estimates from smaller datasets (table S3).
Threeischemicstrokesubtypes(cardioembolic,
large-vessel disease, and small-vessel disease) as
well as the “agreeableness”personality measure
from the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (27)hadin-
sufficient evidence of additive heritability for
robust analysis and thus were excluded from
further examination (25).Theonlyobservedcor-
relation between heritability estimates and fac-
tors relating to study makeup (table S4 and fig. S1,
RESEARCH
The Brainstorm Consortium, Science 360, eaap8757 (2018) 22 June 2018 1of12
*All authors with their affiliations are listed at the end of this paper.
†Collaborators and affiliations are listed in the supplementary
materials.
C to F) was a modest correlation between age
of disorder onset and heritability, suggesting
that early onset brain disorders tend to be more
heritable. Because some of our interpretation of
the results depends on lack of observed corre-
lation, we explored the behavior of observed cor-
relation versus power (fig. S2A), standard errors
(fig. S2B), and the individual results (fig. S2, C
andD)toidentifywherewecanbereasonably
robust in claiming lack of correlation.
The common variant heritability estimates
for the psychiatric and neurological disorders
were generally somewhat lower than previously
reported estimates from common variants (table
S5). When comparing estimates reported here
with those previously reported in studies with
smaller sample sizes (28), a similar pattern was
observed for the behavioral-cognitive traits, with
the exception of “openness,”“neuroticism,”and
“never/ever smoked”(defined as those who have
never smoked versus those who have smoked at
some point) suggesting that some attenuation in
heritability is observed when moving to larger
sample sizes. Measures related to cognitive abil-
ity, such as childhood cognitive performance
[heritability estimate of 0.19 (SE: 0.03)] and years
of education [heritability estimate of 0.30 (SE:
0.01)], yielded estimates that were more con-
sistent with previous estimates of the herita-
bility of intelligence (29,30), suggesting that the
cognitivemeasuresmaybelesspronetopheno–
typic measurement error and/or have a higher
heritability overall than the personality measures.
These heritability estimates should be inter-
preted somewhat cautiously, as they reflect the
phenotype ascertained in each study and will be
deflated in the presence of diagnostic heteroge-
neity, ascertainment errors, or unusual contribu-
tions of high-impact rare variants. To evaluate
potential sources of these differences, we explored
three approaches (25): evaluating the differences
in real data, simulation work (table S5), and quan-
tifying the magnitude of effect for potentially
implied misclassification (table S6).
In comparison with heritability estimates ob-
tained using twin and family data, the more
diverse selection and survival biases in the under-
lying data may attenuate the heritability estimates
and correlations, as may increased within-disorder
heterogeneity introduced by the larger meta-
analyses. A related explanation for the lower es-
timates of heritability may be that increasing sam-
ple sizes have led to expanded inclusion criteria,
meaning that less severely affected cases with a
lower overall burden of risk factors (both ge-
netic and environmental) might be included,
which in turn would attenuate estimates of her-
itability. However, the successful identification
of genome-wide significant loci suggests that
these larger samples are nevertheless very use-
ful for genetic studies, and the simulation results
suggest that this has, at most, a limited effect on
estimated genetic correlations (fig. S9). Even so,
some of the pairs of phenotypes included here
lack sufficient power for robust estimation of ge-
netic correlations. Moreover, our analyses examine
only the properties of common variant contribu-
tions; extending these analyses to include the ef-
fects of rare variants may further inform the extent
of genetic overlap. For example, epilepsy and ASD
show substantial overlap in genetic risk from de
novo loss-of-function mutations (31), in contrast to
the limited common variant sharing observed in
this study. This may suggest that the rare and com-
mon variant contributions to genetic overlap may
behave differently and that incorpor ati ng the two
variant classes into a single analysis may provide
further insight into brain disorder pathogenesis.
To address the possibility of methodological
differences contributing to the differences in the
estimates, and although LDSC and GREML have
previously been shown to yield similar estimates
from the same data (24), we performed our own
comparison in Alzheimer’sdiseasedata(32)(selec-
ted on the basis of data availability). In Alzheimer’s
disease, the previously published heritability esti-
mate [0.24 (SE: 0.03)] is significantly different
The Brainstorm Consortium, Science 360, eaap8757 (2018) 22 June 2018 2of12
Table 1. Brain disorder phenotypes used in the Brainstorm project.
Indented phenotypes are part of a larger whole (e.g., the epilepsy study
contains the samples from both focal epilepsy and generalized epilepsy).
“Anxiety disorders”refers to a meta-analysis of five subtypes (generalized
anxiety disorder, panic disorder, social phobia, agoraphobia, and specific
phobias). References are listed in table S1 and data availability in table S13.
PGC-ADD2, Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) Attention Deficit
Disorder Working Group; PGC-ED, PGC Eating Disorder Working Group;
ANGST, Anxiety Neuro Genetics STudy; PGC-AUT, PGC Autism Spectrum
Disorder Working Group; PGC-BIP2, PGC Bipolar Disorder Working Group;
PGC-MDD2, PGC Major Depressive Disorder Working Group; PGC-OCDTS,
PGC Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Tourette Syndrome Working
Group; PGC-PTSD, PGC Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Working Group;
PGC-SCZ2, PGC Schizophrenia Working Group; IGAP, International
Genomics of Alzheimer’s Project; ILAE, International League Against
Epilepsy Consortium on Complex Epilepsies; ISGC, International Stroke
Genetics Consortium; METASTROKE, a consortium of the ISGC; IHGC,
International; Headache Genetics Consortium; IMSGC, International Multiple
Sclerosis Genetics Consortium; IPDGC, International Parkinson’s Disease
Genomics Consortium. Windicates same as above.
Psychiatric disorders Neurological disorders
Disorder Source Cases Controls Disorder Source Cases Controls
Attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder
PGC-ADD2 12,645 84,435 Alzheimer’s disease IGAP 17,008 37,154
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... .................................... ................................... .................................... ..................................... .......
Anorexia nervosa PGC-ED 3495 10,982 Epilepsy ILAE 7779 20,439
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... .................................... ................................... .................................... ..................................... .......
Anxiety disorders ANGST 5761 11,765 Focal epilepsy W4601* 17,985*
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... .................................... ................................... .................................... ..................................... .......
Autism spectrum disorder PGC-AUT 6197 7377 Generalized epilepsy W2525* 16,244*
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... .................................... ................................... .................................... ..................................... .......
Bipolar disorder PGC-BIP2 20,352 31,358 Intracerebral hemorrhage ISGC 1545 1481
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... .................................... ................................... .................................... ..................................... .......
Major depressive disorder PGC-MDD2 66,358 153,234 Ischemic stroke METASTROKE 10,307 19,326
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... .................................... ................................... .................................... ..................................... .......
Obsessive-compulsive
disorder
PGC-OCDTS 2936 7279 Cardioembolic stroke W1859* 17,708*
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... .................................... ................................... .................................... ..................................... .......
Posttraumatic stress disorder PGC-PTSD 2424 7113 Early onset stroke W3274* 11,012*
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... .................................... ................................... .................................... ..................................... .......
Schizophrenia PGC-SCZ2 33,640 43,456 Large-vessel disease W1817* 17,708*
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... .................................... ................................... .................................... ..................................... .......
Tourette syndrome PGC-OCDTS 4220 8994 Small-vessel disease W1349* 17,708*
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... .................................... ................................... .................................... ..................................... .......
Migraine IHGC 59,673 316,078
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... .................................... ................................... .................................... ..................................... .......
Migraine with aura W6332* 142,817*
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... .................................... ................................... .................................... ..................................... .......
Migraine without aura W8348* 136,758*
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... .................................... ................................... .................................... ..................................... .......
Multiple sclerosis IMSGC 5545 12,153
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... .................................... ................................... .................................... ..................................... .......
Parkinson’s disease IPDGC 5333 12,019
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... .................................... ................................... .................................... ..................................... .......
Total psychiatric 158,028 365,993 Total neurologic 107,190 418,650
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... .................................... ................................... .................................... ..................................... .......
*Sample count for a phenotype that is part of a larger group.
RESEARCH |RESEARCH ARTICLE
fromtheestimateinthecurrentstudy[0.13(SE:
0.02)]. These differences may reflect implicit het-
erogeneity in a much larger case collection used
inthecurrentstudy(effectivesamplesize10,494
versus 46,669) and the potential reasons listed
above, but they could also be due to methodo-
logical variability (most of the previous approx-
imations listed in table S3 are estimated with
a different methodology). To evaluate this, we
applied the same analytical process used in this
paper to the summary statistics of the GERAD
(Genetic and Environmental Risk in Alzheimer’s
Disease) cohort (3941 cases and 7848 controls)
from the Alzheimer’s disease meta-analysis, where
the p rev ious her itability estimate was calculated.
There, we obtained a heritabi lit y estimat e of 0.25
(SE: 0.04), which agrees closely with the pub-
lished estimate of 0.24 (SE: 0.03), suggesting
that the different approximations may reflect dif-
ferences between datasets rather than method-
ological variability.
Correlations among brain disorders
We observed widespread sharing across psychi-
atric disorders (Fig. 1 and fig. S3) by expanding
the number of brain disorder pairs studied be-
yond those previously reported (17), but similar
sharing was not observed among neurological
disorders. Among the psychiatric disorders, schizo-
phrenia showed significant genetic correlation
with most of the psychiatric disorders, whereas
MDD was positively (though not necessarily sig-
nificantly) correlated with every other disorder
tested. Further, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder,
anxiety disorders, MDD, and ADHD each showed
a high degree of correlation to the four others
[average genetic correlation (r
g
) = 0.40] (table
S7A). Anorexia nervosa, obsessive-compulsive
disorder (OCD), and schizophrenia also demon-
strated significant sharing among themselves
(Fig. 1), as did Tourette syndrome (TS), OCD, and
MDD, as well as ASD and schizophrenia. Post-
traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) showed no sig-
nificant correlation with any of the other psychiatric
phenotypes (though some correlation to ADHD
and MDD was observed), and both ASD and TS
appear to potentially be more distinct from the
other psychiatric disorders. The modest power of
the ASD, PTSD, and TS meta-analyses, however,
limits the strength of this conc lusion (fig . S2C).
Neurological disorders showed a more lim-
ited extent of genetic correlation than that of the
psychiatric disorders (Fig. 2, fig. S4, and table
S7A), suggesting greater diagnostic specificity
and/or more distinct etiologies. Parkinson’sdis-
ease, Alzheimer’s disease, generalized epilepsy,
and multiple sclerosis (MS) showed little to no
correlation with other brain disorders. The highest
degree of genetic correlation among the neuro-
logical disorders was observed for focal epilepsy
(average r
g
=0.46,excludingtheotherepilepsy
datasets), though none of the correlations were
significant, reflecting the relatively modest power
of the current focal epilepsy meta-analysis (fig.
S2C). However, the modest heritability and the
broad pattern of sharing observed for focal epi-
lepsy may be consistent with heterogeneity and
The Brainstorm Consortium, Science 360, eaap8757 (2018) 22 June 2018 3of12
Table 2. Behavioral-cognitive and additional phenotypes used in the study. Indented
phenotypes are part of a larger whole (e.g., samples in the college attainment analysis are a subset
of those in the analysis for years of education). (d), dichotomous phenotype; (q), quantitative
phenotype. References and phenotype definitions are listed in table S2, and data availability in table
S13. SSGAC, Social Science Genetic Association Consortium; CTG, Complex Trait Genetics Lab;
GPC, Genetics of Personality Consortium; TAG, Tobacco and Genetics Consortium; GIANT, Genetic
Investigation of ANthropometric Traits consortium; Cardiogram, CARDIoGRAMplusC4D Consortium;
IIBDGC, International Inflammatory Bowel Disease Genetics Consortium.
Phenotype Source Samples
Behavioral-cognitive phenotypes
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
Cognitive
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
Years of education (q) SSGAC 293,723
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
College attainment (d) W120,917*
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
Cognitive performance (q) W17,989*
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
Intelligence (d) CTG 78,308
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
Personality measures
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
Subjective well-being SSGAC 298,420
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
Depressive symptoms W161,460*
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
Neuroticism (q) W170,911*
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
Extraversion (q) GPC 63,030*
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
Agreeableness (q) W17,375*
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
Conscientiousness (q) W17,375*
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
Openness (q) W17,375*
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
Smoking-related
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
Never/ever smoked (d) TAG 74,035
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
Cigarettes per day (q) TAG 38,617*
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
Additional phenotypes
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
BMI (q) GIANT 339,224
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
Height (q) W253,288*
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
Coronary artery disease (d) Cardiogram 86,995
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
Crohn’s disease IIBDGC 20,883
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
Total 1,124,048
.................................... .................................. ..................................... ..................................... ..................................... ................................
*Sample counts represent overlap with preceding dataset.
Fig. 1. Genetic correlations across psychiatric phenotypes. The color of each box indicates the
magnitude of the correlation, and the size of the box indicates its significance (LDSC), with
significant correlations filling each square completely. Asterisks indicate genetic correlations that are
significantly different from zero after Bonferroni correction.
RESEARCH |RESEARCH ARTICLE
potentially even diagnostic misclassification across
a range of neurological conditions.
In the cross-category correlation analysis, the
observed pattern is consistent with limited sharing
across the included neurological and psychiatric
disorders (Fig. 3; average r
g
=0.03).Theonly
significant cross-category correlations were with
migraine, suggesting that this disorder may share
some of its genetic architecture with psychiatric
disorders: migraine and ADHD (r
g
=0.26,P=
8.81 × 10
−8
), migraine and TS (r
g
=0.19,P=1.80×
10
−5
), and migraine and MDD (r
g
=0.32,P=
1.42 × 10
−22
for all migraine; r
g
=0.23,P=5.23×
10
−5
for migraine without aura; r
g
=0.28,P=1.00×
10
−4
for migraine with aura).
We observed several significant genetic corre-
lations between the behavioral-cognitive or addi-
tional phenotypes and brain disorders (Fig. 4
and table S7B). Results for cognitive traits were
dichotomous among psychiatric phenotypes (fig.
S5A), with ADHD, anxiety disorders, MDD, and
TS showing negative correlations to the cognitive
measures and anorexia nervosa, ASD, bipolar
disorder, and OCD showing positive correlations.
Schizophrenia showed more mixed results, with
a significantly negative correlation to intelligence
but a positive correlation to years of education.
Among neurological phenotypes (fig. S5B), the
correlations were either negative or null, with
Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, intracerebral hem-
orrhage (ICH), ischemic stroke, early onset stroke,
and migraine showing significantly negative cor-
relations. Correlations between college attainment
and years of education with bipolar disorder (24),
Alzheimer’s disease, and schizophrenia have been
previously reported (33).
Among the personality and symptom measures,
significant positive correlations were observed
between neuroticism and anorexia nervosa, anx-
iety disorders, migraine, migraine without aura,
MDD, OCD, schizophrenia, and TS [fig. S6, A and
B; replicating previously reported correlations
with MDD and schizophrenia (34)]; between de-
pressive symptoms and ADHD, anxiety disorder,
bipolar disorder, MDD, and schizophrenia; and
between subjective well-being and anxiety dis-
order, bipolar disorder, and MDD. For smoking-
related measures, the only significant genetic
correlations were between never/ever smoked
and MDD (r
g
= 0.33, P=3.10×10
−11
)aswellas
ADHD (r
g
=0.37,P=3.15×10
−6
).
Among the additional phenotypes, the two
examples of disorders with well-defined etiolo-
gies had different results. Crohn’sdisease,repre-
senting immunological pathophysiology, showed
no correlation with any of the study phenotypes,
whereas the phenotype representing v ascular
pathophysiology (coronary artery disease) showed
significant correlation to MDD (r
g
=0.19,P=
8.71 × 10
−5
) as well as the two stroke-related
phenotypes (r
g
=0.69,P=2.47×10
−6
to ischemic
stroke and r
g
=0.86,P=2.26×10
−5
to early
onset stroke), suggesting shared genetic effects
across these phenotypes. Significant correlations
were also observed for BMI, which was positively
correlated with ADHD and MDD, and negative-
ly correlated with anorexia nervosa [as previous-
ly reported with a different dataset (24)] and
schizophrenia.
Our enrichment analysis (fig. S7 and tables S8
to S12) demonstrated significant heritability en-
richments between the CNS and generalized
epilepsy, MDD, TS, college attainment, intelli-
gence, neuroticism, and the never/ever smoked
trait; between depressive symptoms and adrenal/
pancreatic cells and tissues; as well as between
hematopoietic cells (including immune system
cells) and MS (fig. S7, A and B, and tables S8 and
S9). We replicated the reported (CNS) enrich-
ment for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and
years of education (tables S8 and S9) and
observed the reported enrichments for BMI (CNS),
years of education (CNS), height (connective tis-
sues and bone, cardiovascular system, and other),
and Crohn’s disease (hematopoietic cells) from
the same datasets (fig. S7, C and D) (26). The psy-
chiatric disorders with large numbers of identified
GWASloci(bipolardisorder,MDD,andschizo-
phrenia) and migraine, which was the only cross-
correlated neurological disorder, show enrichment
to conserved regions (tables S10 and S12), whereas
the other neurological disorders with similar
numbers of loci (MS, Alzheimer’s disease, and
Parkinson’s disease) do not (fig. S7, A and B).
Enrichment to conserved regions was also ob-
served for neuroticism, intelligence, and col-
lege attainment and to H3K9ac peaks for BMI
(tables S11 and S12).
Discussion
By integrating and analyzing the genome-wide
association summary statistic data from consor-
tia of 25 brain disorders, we find that psychiatric
disorders broadly share a considerable portion
of their common variant genetic risk, especially
across schizophrenia, MDD, bipolar disorder,
anxiety disorder, and ADHD, whereas neurolog-
ical disorders are more genetically distinct. Across
categories, psychiatric and neurologic disorders
share relatively little common genetic risk, sug-
gesting that multiple different and largely in-
dependently regulated etiological pathways may
give rise to similar clinical manifestations [e.g.,
psychosis, which manifests in both schizophrenia
(35)andAlzheimer’sdisease(36)]. Except for mi-
graine, which appears to share some genetic ar-
chitecture with psychiatric disorders, the existing
clinical delineation between neurology and psy-
chiatry is corroborated at the level of common
variant risk for the studied disorders.
On the basis of the observed results, we per-
formed some exploratory analyses to address
concerns about diagnostic overlap and misclas-
sification, which are particularly relevant to psy-
chiatric disorders, owing to their spectral nature.
Given that the broad and continuous nature of
psychiatric disorder spectra has long been clin-
ically recognized (37–39) and that patients can,
in small numbers, progress from one diagnosis
to another (40), we evaluated to what extent this
kind of diagnostic overlap could explain the ob-
served correlations. Genetic correlation could arise
if, for example, patients progress through multi-
ple diagnoses over their lifetime or if some spe-
cific diagnostic boundaries between phenotype
pairs are particularly porous to misclassification
(table S5). Although, for instance, migraine and
The Brainstorm Consortium, Science 360, eaap8757 (2018) 22 June 2018 4of12
Fig. 2. Genetic correlations across n eurological phenotypes. The color of each box indicates the
magnitude of the correlation, and the size of the box indicates its significance (LDSC), with
significant correlations filling each square completely. Asterisks indicate genetic correlations that are
significantly different from zero after Bonferroni correction. Some phenotypes have substantial
overlaps (Table 1)—for instance, all cases of generalized epilepsy are also cases of epilepsy. Asterisks
indicate significant genetic correlation after multiple testing correction.
RESEARCH |RESEARCH ARTICLE
schizophrenia are unlikely to be mistaken for one
another, there may be more substantial misclassi-
fication between particular psychiatric disorders,
consistent with the clinical controversies in classi-
fication. Previous work (41) suggests that sub-
stantial misclassification (on the order of 15 to
30%, depending on whether it is uni- or bidirec-
tional) is required to introduce false levels of
genetic correlation. We found that the observed
levels of correlation are unlikely to appear in the
absence of underlying genetic correlation (table
S6), as it is apparent that a very high degree of
misclassification (up to 79%) would be required
to produce the observed correlations in the ab-
sence of any true genetic correlation and that
reasonably expected misclassification would have
limited impact on the observed r
g
(fig. S8).
Therefore, these results suggest true sharing of
a substantial fraction of the common variant
genetic architecture among psychiatric disorders
as well as between behavioral-cognitive mea-
sures and brain disorders. We also performed
large-scale simulations to explore the effect of
sample size, polygenicity, and degree of correla-
tion on power to detect significant correlations.
First, we established that the observed herita-
bility of the simulated misclassified traits in the
UK Biobank data behaves as would be theoret-
ically expected (fig. S9A) and that the effects on
observed correlation (fig. S9, B and C) are in
line with the estimates from family data (41). Rea-
sonably low levels of misclassification or changes
to the exact level of heritability appear unlikely
to induce significant correlations, as observed in
the power analysis (fig. S10), though a lower ob-
served heritability caused by substantial misclas-
sification (fig. S9A) will decrease the power to
estimate true genetic overlap.
The high degree of genetic correlation among
the psychiatric disorders adds further evidence
that current clinical diagnostics do not reflect
specific genetic etiology for these disorders and
that genetic risk factors for psychiatric disorders
do not respect clinical diagnostic boundaries.
Rather, this finding suggests a more inter-
connected genetic etiology, in contrast to that
of neurological disorders, and underscores the
need to refine psychiatric diagnostics. This
study may provide important “scaffolding”to
support a framework for investigating mental
disorders, incorporating many levels of infor-
mation to understand basic dimensions of brain
function.
The observed positive genetic correlations are
consistent with a few hypothetical scenarios.
For example, this observation may reflect the ex-
istence of some portion of common genetic risk
factors conferring risks for multiple psychiatric
disorders and where other distinct additional
factors, both genetic and nongenetic, contribute
to the eventual clinical presentation. The pres-
ence of significant genetic correlation may also
reflect the phenotypic overlap between any two
disorders; for example, the sharing between
schizophrenia and ADHD might reflect underly-
ing difficulties in executive functioning, which
are well-established in both disorders (42), and
that the shared risk arises from a partial cap-
ture of its shared genetic component. Similarly,
we might speculate that a shared mechanism
underlying cognitive biases may extend from over-
valued ideas to delusions (ranging from anorexia
nervosa and OCD to schizophrenia), and that this
heritable intermediate trait confers pleiotropic
risk to multiple outcomes. This kind of latent
variable could give rise to the observed genetic
correlation between disorders, owing to the
shared portion of variation affecting that vari-
able. Though a combination of these is likely,
more genome-wide significant loci are needed to
evaluate these overlaps at the locus level.
Conversely, the low correlations observed
across neurological disorders suggest that the
current classification reflects relatively specific
genetic etiologies, although the limited sample
size for some of these disorders and the lack of
inclusion of disorders conceived as “circuit-based”
(e.g., restless legs syndrome, sleep disorders, and
possibly essential tremor) constrain the full gen-
eralizability of this conclusion. On the basis of
our observations, degenerative disorders (such as
Alzheimer’sandParkinson’s diseases) would there-
fore not be expected to share their polygenic risk
profiles with a neuroimmunological disorder (such
as MS) or neurovascular disorder (such as ische-
mic stroke). Similarly, we see limited evidence for
the reported comorbidity between migraine with
aura and ischemic stroke (43)(r
g
=0.29,P=0.099);
however, the standard errors of this comparison
are too high to draw strong conclusions. At the
disorder subtype level, migraine with and without
aura (r
g
=0.48,P=1.79×10
−5
) show substantial
genetic correlation, whereas focal and generalized
epilepsy (r
g
=0.16,P=0.388)showmuchless.
The few significant correlations across neurology
and psych iat ry —namely, between migraine and
ADHD, MDD, and TS—suggest modest shared eti-
ological overlap across the neurology-psychiatry dis-
tinction. The comorbidity of migraine with MDD,
TS, and ADHD has been previously reported in
epidemiological studies (44–47), whereas the pre-
viously reported comorbidity between migraine
and bipolar disorder seen in epidemiological
studies (48) was not reflected in our estimate of
genetic correlation (r
g
=−0.03, P=0.406).
Several phenotypes show only very low-level
correlations with any of the other disorders and
phenotypes that we studied, despite large sample
size and robust evidence for heritability, which sug-
gests that their common variant genetic risk may
largely be unique. Alzheimer’sdisease,Parkinson’s
disease, and MS show extremely limited sharing
with the other phenotypes and with each other.
Neuroinflammation has been implicated in the
pathophysiology of each of these conditions
(49–51), as it has for migraine (52) and many
psychiatric conditions, including schizophrenia
(53), but no considerable shared heritability was
observed with either of those conditions nor with
Crohn’s disease, nor did we observe enrichment
for immune-related tissues in the functional par-
titioning (fig. S7) as observed for Crohn’sdisease.
Although this does not preclude the sharing of
individual neuroinflammatory mechanisms in
these disorders, the large-scale lack of shared
common variant genetic influences supports the
distinctiveness of disorder etiology. Further, we
observed significant enrichment of heritability for
immunological cells and tissues in MS only, show-
ing that inflammation-specific regulatory marks
in the genome do not show overall enrichment
forcommonvariantriskforeitherAlzheimer’sor
Parkinson’sdiseases[thoughthisdoesnotpreclude
The Brainstorm Consortium, Science 360, eaap8757 (2018) 22 June 2018 5of12
Fig. 3. Genetic correlations across neurological and psychiatric phenotyp es. The color of each
box indicates the magnitude of the correlation, and the size of the box indicates its significance
(LDSC), with significant correlations filling each square completely. Asterisks indicate genetic
correlations that are significantly different from zero after Bonferroni correction.
RESEARCH |RESEARCH ARTICLE
the effects of specific, not particularly polygenic
neuroinflammatory mechanisms (54)]. Among
psychiatric disorders, ASD and TS showed a sim-
ilar absence of correlation with other disorders,
although this may reflect small sample sizes.
Analysis of the Big Five personality measures
suggestthatthecurrentsamplesizesmaybelarge
enough for correlation testing. Neuroticism, which
has by far the largest sample size, shows sev-
eral significant correlations. Most significant of
these was to MDD (r
g
= 0.737, P=5.04×10
−96
),
providing evidence for the link between these
phenotypes, as reported for polygenic risk scores
(55)andtwinstudies(56,57); as well as other
psychiatric disorders (Fig. 4 and table S7B). The
correlation between MDD and anxiety disorders,
with a similar pattern of correlation and the di-
mensional measures of depressive symptoms, sub-
jective well-being, and neuroticism suggests that
they all tag a similar underlying etiology. The sig-
nificant correlation between coronary artery dis-
ease and MDD supports the link between MDD
and CAD (58), and the observed correlation be-
tween ADHD and smoking initiation (r
g
=0.374,
P=3.15×10
−6
) is consistent with the epidemio-
logical evidence of overlap (59)andfindingsfrom
twin studies (60).
For the neurological disorders, five (Alzheimer’s
disease, intracerebral hemorrhage, ischemic and
early onset stroke, and migraine) showed signif-
icant negative genetic correlation to the cogni-
tive measures, whereas two (epilepsy and focal
epilepsy) showed moderate negative genetic cor-
relation (fig. S5). For Alzheimer’s disease, poor
cognitive performance in early life has been
linked to increased risk for developing the dis-
order (61),buttoourknowledgenosuchcon-
nection has been reported for other phenotypes.
Among the psychiatric disorders, ADHD, anxiety
disorders, and MDD show a significant negative
correlation to cognitive and education attain-
ment measures, whereas the remaining five of
the eight psychiatric disorders (anorexia nervosa,
ASD, bipolar disorder, OCD, and schizophrenia)
showed significant positive genetic correlation
with one or more cognitive measures. These results
suggest the existence of a link between cognitive
performance in early life and the genetic risk for
both psychiatric and neurological brain disorders.
The basis of the genetic correlations between edu-
cation, cognition, and brain disorders may have
a variety of root causes, including indexing per-
formance differences on the basis of behavioral
dysregulation (e.g., ADHD relating to attentional
problems during cognitive tests), or may reflect
ascertainment biases in certain disorders condi-
tional on impaired cognition (e.g., individuals with
lower cognitive reserve being more rapidly iden-
tified for Alzheimer’sdisease),buttheresultscould
also suggest a direct link between the underlying
etiologies.
BMI shows significant positive genetic corre-
lation to ADHD, consistent with a meta-analysis
linking ADHD to obesity (62), and negative ge-
netic correlation with anorexia nervosa, OCD, and
schizophrenia. This is consistent with evidence for
enrichment of BMI heritability in CNS tissues (26)
that suggest neuronal involvement (63); this
may also provide a partial genetic explanation
for lower BMI in anorexia nervosa patients even
after recovery (64). Given that no strong correla-
tions were observed between BMI and any of the
neurological phenotypes, BMI’sbrain-specificge-
netic architecture may be more closely related to
behavioral phenotypes. Ischemic stroke and BMI
show surprisingly little genetic correlation in this
analysis (r
g
=0.07,P= 0.26), suggesting that
although BMI is a risk factor for stroke (65), there
is little evidence for shared common genetic ef-
fects. These analyses also suggest that the re-
ported reduced rates of cardiovascular disease
in individuals with histories of anorexia nervosa
(66,67) are more likely due to BMI-related second-
aryeffects.Thelimitedevidence of genetic corre-
lation of anorexia nervosa with intracerebral
hemorrhage, ischemic stroke, early onset stroke,
and coronary artery disease suggests that any
lower cardiovascular mortality is more likely due
to direct BMI-related effects rather than to ge-
netic risk variants.
The genetic correlation results presented here
indicate that the clinical boundaries for the
studied psychiatric phenotypes do not reflect
distinct underlying pathogenic processes. This
suggests that genetically informed analyses may
provide a basis for restructuring of psychiatric
nosology, consistent with twin- and family-based
results. In contrast, neurological disorders show
greater genetic specificity, and although it is im-
portant to emphasize that while some brain dis-
orders are underrepresented here, our results
demonstratethelimitedevidenceforwidespread
common genetic risk sharing between psychiat-
ric and neurological disorders. However, we pro-
vide strong evidence that both psychiatric and
neurological disorders show robust correlations
with cognitive and personality measures, indicat-
ing avenues for follow-up studies. Further analysis
is needed to evaluate whether overlapping ge-
netic contributions to psychiatric pathology may
influence treatment choices. Ultimately, such de-
velopments are promising steps toward reducing
diagnostic heterogeneity and eventually improv-
ing the diagnostics and treatment of psychiatric
disorders.
Materials and methods summary
We collected GWAS meta-analysis summary statis-
tics for 25 brain disorders and 17 other phenotypes
from various consortia and, where necessary, gen -
erated new, non–sex-stratified European cohort–
only versions of the meta-analyses (25). All datasets
underwent uniform quality control (25).For each
trait, by using the LDSC framework (24), the total
additive common SNP heritability present in the
summary statistics (h
2
g) was estimated by regress-
ing the association c
2
statistic of a SNP against
the total amount of common genetic variation
tagged by that SNP, for all SNPs. Genetic correla-
tions (r
g
; i.e., the genome-wide average shared
genetic risk) for pairs of phenotypes were esti-
mated by regressing the product of z-scores, rather
than the c
2
statistic, for each phenotype and for
each SNP. Significance was assessed by Bonferroni
multiple testing correction via estimating the
number of independent brain disorder pheno-
types via matrix decomposition (25). Functional
and partitioning analyses for the GWAS data-
sets were also performed using LDSC regression.
Power analyses and simulation work to aid in
interpretation of the results were conducted
using genotype data from the UK Biobank re-
source (25).
The Brainstorm Consortium, Science 360, eaap8757 (2018) 22 June 2018 6of12
Fig. 4. Genetic correlations across brain disorders and behavioral-cognitive phenotypes. The
color of each box indicates the magnitude of the correlation, and the size of the box indicates its
significance (LDSC), with significant correlations filling each square completely. Asterisks indicate
genetic correlations that are significantly different from zero after Bonferroni correction.
RESEARCH |RESEARCH ARTICLE
REFERENCES AND NOTES
1. J. B. Martin, The integration of neurology, psychiatry, and
neuroscience in the 21st century. Am. J. Psychiatry 159,695–704
(2002) . doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.159.5.695;pmid:11986119
2. J. W. Smoller, Disorders and borders: Psychiatric genetics and
nosology. Am. J. Med. Genet. B. Neuropsychiatr. Genet. 162,
559–578 (2013). doi: 10.1002/ajmg.b.32174; pmid: 24132891
3. T. R. Insel, P. S. Wang, Rethinking mental illness. JAMA
303, 1970–1971 (2010). doi: 10.1001/jama.2010.555;
pmid: 20483974
4. T. J. Polderman et al., Meta-analysis of the heritability of
human traits based on fifty years of twin studies. Nat. Genet.
47, 702–709 (2015). doi: 10.1038/ng.3285; pmid: 25985137
5. K. S. Kendler, C. A. Prescott, J. Myers, M. C. Neale, The
structure of genetic and environmental risk factors for
common psychiatric and substance use disorders in men and
women. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 60, 929–937 (2003).
doi: 10.1001/archpsyc.60.9.929; pmid: 12963675
6. R. Jensen, L. J. Stovner, Epidemiology and comorbidity of
headache. Lancet Neurol. 7, 354–361 (2008). doi: 10.1016/
S1474-4422(08)70062-0; pmid: 18339350
7. J. Nuyen et al., Comorbidity was associated with neurologic
and psychiatric diseases: A general practice-based controlled
study. J. Clin. Epidemiol. 59, 1274–1284 (2006). doi: 10.1016/
j.jclinepi.2006.01.005; pmid: 17098570
8. R. M. Hirschfeld et al., Screening for bipolar disorder in
the community. J. Clin. Psychiatry 64,53–59 (2003).
doi: 10.4088/JCP.v64n0111; pmid: 12590624
9. A. Pan, Q. Sun, O. I. Okereke, K. M. Rexrode, F. B. Hu,
Depression and risk of stroke morbidity and mortality:
A meta-analysis and systematic review. JAMA 306, 1241–1249
(2011). doi: 10.1001/jama.2011.1282; pmid: 21934057
10. A. Lo-Castro, P. Curatolo, Epilepsy associated with autism
and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: Is there a genetic
link? Brain Dev. 36, 185–193 (2014). doi: 10.1016/
j.braindev.2013.04.013; pmid: 23726375
11. E. N. Bertelsen, J. T. Larsen, L. Petersen, J. Christensen,
S. Dalsgaard, Childhood Epilepsy, Febrile Seizures, and
Subsequent Risk of ADHD. Pediatrics 138, e20154654 (2016).
doi: 10.1542/peds.2015-4654; pmid: 27412639
12. C. G. de Kovel et al., Recurrent microdeletions at 15q11.2
and 16p13.11 predispose to idiopathic generalized epilepsies.
Brain 133,23–32 (2010). doi: 10.1093/brain/awp262;
pmid: 19843651
13. T. D. Graves, M. G. Hanna, Neurological channelopathies.
Postgrad. Med. J. 81,20–32 (2005). doi: 10.1136/
pgmj.2004.022012; pmid: 15640425
14. J. Haan, G. M. Terwindt, A. M. van den Maagdenberg,
A. H. Stam, M. D. Ferrari, A review of the genetic relation
between migraine and epilepsy. Cephalalgia 28, 105–113
(2008). pmid: 18197881
15. S. Debette et al., Common variation in PHACTR1 is associated
with susceptibility to cervical artery dissection. Nat. Genet.
47,78–83 (2015). doi: 10.1038/ng.3154; pmid: 25420145
16. S. M. Purcell et al., Common polygenic variation contributes to
risk of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Nature 460,
748–752 (2009). pmid: 19571811
17. Cross-Disorder Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium,
Genetic relationship between five psychiatric disorders
estimated from genome-wide SNPs. Nat. Genet. 45, 984–994
(2013). doi: 10.1038/ng.2711; pmid: 23933821
18. J. C. Lambert et al., Meta-analysis of 74,046 individuals
identifies 11 new susceptibility loci for Alzheimer’s disease.
Nat. Genet. 45, 1452–1458 (2013). doi: 10.1038/ng.2802;
pmid: 24162737
19. T. W. Mühleisen et al., Genome-wide association study reveals
two new risk loci for bipolar disorder. Nat. Commun. 5,
3339 (2014). doi: 10.1038/ncomms4339; pmid: 24618891
20. V. Anttila et al., Genome-wide meta-analysis identifies new
susceptibility loci for migraine. Nat. Genet. 45, 912–917
(2013). doi: 10.1038/ng.2676; pmid: 23793025
21. M. A. Nalls et al., Large-scale meta-analysis of genome-wide
association data identifies six new risk loci for Parkinson’s
disease. Nat. Genet. 46, 989–993 (2014). doi: 10.1038/
ng.3043; pmid: 25064009
22. Schizophrenia Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics
Consortium, Biological insights from 108 schizophrenia-
associated genetic loci. Nature 511, 421–427 (2014).
doi: 10.1038/nature13595; pmid: 25056061
23. N. Solovieff, C. Cotsapas, P. H. Lee, S. M. Purcell, J. W. Smoller,
Pleiotropy in complex traits: Challenges and strategies.
Nat. Rev. Genet. 14, 483–495 (2013). doi: 10.1038/nrg3461;
pmid: 23752797
24. B. Bulik-Sullivan et al., An atlas of genetic correlations across
human diseases and traits. Nat. Genet. 47, 1236–1241
(2015). doi: 10.1038/ng.3406; pmid: 26414676
25. See materials and methods and other supplementary materials.
26. H. K. Finucane et al., Partitioning heritability by functional
annotation using genome-wide association summary statistics.
Nat. Genet. 47, 1228–1235 (2015). doi: 10.1038/ng.3404;
pmid: 26414678
27. M. H. de Moor et al., Meta-analysis of genome-wide association
studies for personality. Mol. Psychiatry 17, 337–349 (2012).
doi: 10.1038/mp.2010.128; pmid: 21173776
28. R. A. Power, M. Pluess, Heritability estimates of the Big Five
personality traits based on common genetic variants.
Transl. Psychiatry 5, e604 (2015). doi: 10.1038/tp.2015.96;
pmid: 26171985
29. C. M. Haworth et al., The heritability of general cognitive ability
increases linearly from childhood to young adulthood.
Mol. Psychiatry 15, 1112–1120 (2010). doi: 10.1038/
mp.2009.55; pmid: 19488046
30. I. J. Deary et al., Genetic contributions to stability and change
in intelligence from childhood to old age. Nature 482, 212–215
(2012). doi: 10.1038/nature10781; pmid: 22258510
31. S. De Rubeis et al., Synaptic, transcriptional and chromatin
genes disrupted in autism. Nature 515, 209–215 (2014).
doi: 10.1038/nature13772; pmid: 25363760
32. S. H. Lee et al., Estimation and partitioning of polygenic
variation captured by common SNPs for Alzheimer’s disease,
multiple sclerosis and endometriosis. Hum. Mol. Genet. 22,
832–841 (2013). doi: 10.1093/hmg/dds491; pmid: 23193196
33. A. Okbay et al., Genome-wide association study identifies
74 loci associated with educational attainment. Nature 533,
539–542 (2016). doi: 10.1038/nature17671; pmid: 27225129
34. D. J. Smith et al., Genome-wide analysis of over 106 000
individuals identifies 9 neuroticism-associated loci. Mol.
Psychiatry 21, 749–757 (2016). doi: 10.1038/mp.2016.49;
pmid: 27067015
35. P. F. Buckley, B. J. Miller, D. S. Lehrer, D. J. Castle, Psychiatric
comorbidities and schizophrenia. Schizophr. Bull. 35, 383–402
(2009). doi: 10.1093/schbul/sbn135; pmid: 19011234
36. C. G. Lyketsos et al., Mental and behavioral disturbances
in dementia: Findings from the Cache County Study on
Memory in Aging. Am. J. Psychiatry 157, 708–714 (2000).
doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.157.5.708; pmid: 10784462
37. R. Kendell, A. Jablensky, Distinguishing between the validity
and utility of psychiatric diagnoses. Am. J. Psychiatry 160,
4–12 (2003). doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.160.1.4; pmid: 12505793
38. A. S. Cristino et al., Neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric
disorders represent an interconnected molecular system.
Mol. Psychiatry 19, 294–301 (2014). doi: 10.1038/mp.2013.16;
pmid: 23439483
39. D. A. Regier et al., Limitations of diagnostic criteria and
assessment instruments for mental disorders. Implications
for research and policy. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 55, 109–115
(1998). doi: 10.1001/archpsyc.55.2.109; pmid: 9477922
40. T. M. Laursen, E. Agerbo, C. B. Pedersen, Bipolar disorder,
schizoaffective disorder, and schizophrenia overlap: A new
comorbidity index. J. Clin. Psychiatry 70, 1432–1438 (2009).
doi: 10.4088/JCP.08m04807; pmid: 19538905
41. N. R. Wray, S. H. Lee, K. S. Kendler, Impact of diagnostic
misclassification on estimation of genetic correlations using
genome-wide genotypes. Eur. J. Hum. Genet. 20, 668–674
(2012). doi: 10.1038/ejhg.2011.257; pmid: 22258521
42. E. G. Willcutt, A. E. Doyle, J. T. Nigg, S. V. Faraone,
B. F. Pennington, Validity of the executive function theory of
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A meta-analytic
review. Biol. Psychiatry 57, 1336–1346 (2005). doi: 10.1016/
j.biopsych.2005.02.006; pmid: 15950006
43. J. T. Spector et al., Migraine headache and ischemic stroke
risk: An updated meta-analysis. Am. J. Med. 123,
612–624 (2010). doi: 10.1016/j.amjmed.2009.12.021;
pmid: 20493462
44. O. B. Fasmer, A. Halmøy, K. J. Oedegaard, J. Haavik, Adult
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is associated with
migraine headaches. Eur. Arch. Psychiatry Clin. Neurosci.
261, 595–602 (2011). doi: 10.1007/s00406-011-0203-9;
pmid: 21394551
45. N. Breslau, R. B. Lipton, W. F. Stewart, L. R. Schultz,
K. M. Welch, Comorbidity of migraine and depression:
Investigating potential etiology and prognosis. Neurology 60,
1308–1312 (2003). doi: 10.1212/01.
WNL.0000058907.41080.54; pmid: 12707434
46. K.R. Merikangas,J.Angst,H.Isler,Migraineandpsychopathology.
Results of the Zurich cohort study of young adults. Arch. Gen.
Psychiatry 47, 849–853 (1990). doi: 10.1001/archpsyc.1990.
01810210057008; pmid: 2393343
47. G. Barabas, W. S. Matthews, M. Ferrari, Tourette’s syndrome
and migraine. Arch. Neurol. 41, 871–872 (1984). doi: 10.1001/
archneur.1984.04050190077018; pmid: 6589980
48. R. S. McIntyre et al., The prevalence and impact of migraine
headache in bipolar disorder: Results from the Canadian
Community Health Survey. Headache 46, 973–982 (2006).
doi: 10.1111/j.1526-4610.2006.00469.x; pmid: 16732843
49. M. T. Heneka et al., Neuroinflammation in Alzheimer’s disease.
Lancet Neurol. 14, 388–405 (2015). doi: 10.1016/S1474-
4422(15)70016-5; pmid: 25792098
50. E. C. Hirsch, S. Hunot, Neuroinflammation in Parkinson’s
disease: A target for neuroprotection? Lancet Neurol. 8,
382–397 (2009). doi: 10.1016/S1474-4422(09)70062-6;
pmid: 19296921
51. E. M. Frohman, M. K. Racke, C. S. Raine, Multiple sclerosis—the
plaque and its pathogenesis. N. Engl. J. Med. 354, 942–955
(2006). doi: 10.1056/NEJMra052130; pmid: 16510748
52. C. Waeber, M. A. Moskowitz, Migraine as an inflammatory
disorder. Neurology 64 (Suppl 2), S9–S15 (2005). doi: 10.1212/
WNL.64.10_suppl_2.S9; pmid: 15911785
53. J. Steiner et al., Increased prevalence of diverse N-methyl-D-
aspartate glutamate receptor antibodies in patients with an
initial diagnosis of schizophrenia: Specific relevance of IgG
NR1a antibodies for distinction from N-methyl-D-aspartate
glutamate receptor encephalitis. JAMA Psychiatry 70,
271–278 (2013). doi: 10.1001/2013.jamapsychiatry.86;
pmid: 23344076
54. L. Jones et al., Convergent genetic and expression data
implicate immunity in Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimers Dement.
11, 658–671 (2015). doi: 10.1016/j.jalz.2014.05.1757;
pmid: 25533204
55. M. H. M. de Moor et al., Meta-analysis of Genome-wide
Association Studies for Neuroticism, and the Polygenic
Association With Major Depressive Disorder. JAMA Psychiatry
72, 642–650 (2015). doi: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2015.0554;
pmid: 25993607
56. K. S. Kendler, M. Gatz, C. O. Gardner, N. L. Pedersen,
Personality and major depression: A Swedish longitudinal,
population-based twin study. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 63,
1113–1120 (2006). doi: 10.1001/archpsyc.63.10.1113;
pmid: 17015813
57. R. E. Ørstavik, K. S. Kendler, N. Czajkowski, K. Tambs,
T. Reichborn-Kjennerud, The relationship between depressive
personality disorder and major depressive disorder: A population-
based twin study. Am. J. Psychiatry 164, 1866–1872 (2007).
doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2007.07010045; pmid: 18056242
58. H. Hemingway, M. Marmot, Evidence based cardiology:
Psychosocial factors in the aetiology and prognosis of coronary
heart disease. Systematic review of prospective cohort
studies. BMJ 318, 1460–1467 (1999). doi: 10.1136/
bmj.318.7196.1460; pmid: 10346775
59. F. J. McClernon, S. H. Kollins, ADHD and smoking: From genes
to brain to behavior. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 1141, 131–147
(2008). doi: 10.1196/annals.1441.016; pmid: 18991955
60. T. Korhonen et al., Externalizing behaviors and cigarette
smoking as predictors for use of illicit drugs: A longitudinal
study among Finnish adolescent twins. Twin Res. Hum. Genet.
13, 550–558 (2010). doi: 10.1375/twin.13.6.550;
pmid: 21142931
61. D. A. Snowdon et al., Linguistic ability in early life and cognitive
function and Alzheimer’s disease in late life. Findings from
the Nun Study. JAMA 275, 528–532 (1996). doi: 10.1001/
jama.1996.03530310034029; pmid: 8606473
62. S. Cortese et al., Association Between ADHD and Obesity:
A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Am. J. Psychiatry 173,
34–43 (2016). doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2015.15020266;
pmid: 26315982
63. A. E. Locke et al., Genetic studies of body mass index yield
new insights for obesity biology. Nature 518,197–206 (2015).
doi: 10.1038/nature14177; pmid: 25673413
64. L. Mustelin et al., Long-term outcome in anorexia nervosa in
the community. Int. J. Eat. Disord. 48, 851–859 (2015).
doi: 10.1002/eat.22415; pmid: 26059099
65. T. Kurth et al., Prospective study of body mass index and risk
of stroke in apparently healthy women. Circulation 111,
1992–1998 (2005). doi: 10.1161/01.CIR.0000161822.83163.B6;
pmid: 15837954
66. S. R. Korndörfer et al., Long-term survival of patients with
anorexia nervosa: A population-based study in Rochester,
Minn. Mayo Clin. Proc. 78, 278–284 (2003). doi: 10.4065/
78.3.278; pmid: 12630579
The Brainstorm Consortium, Science 360, eaap8757 (2018) 22 June 2018 7of12
RESEARCH |RESEARCH ARTICLE
67. P. F. Sullivan, Discrepant results regarding long-term
survival of patients with anorexia nervosa?
Mayo Clin. Proc. 78,273–274 (2003). doi: 10.4065/
78.3.273;pmid:12630577
ACKNOWL EDGME NTS
We thank the members of the Neale and Daly laboratories for
helpful discussions; R. Hoskins, J. Wessman, and J. Martin for
comments on the manuscript; M. Whittall for inspiration; S. Knemeyer
for help with the summary figure; C. Hammond for organizational
assistance; and the patients and participants of the respective
consortia for their participation. Data on coronary artery disease
have been contributed by CARDIoGRAMplusC4D investigators
and have been downloaded from www.cardiogramplusc4d.org.
matSpD (Matrix Spectral Decomposition method) is available at
neurogenetics.qimrberghofer.edu.au/matSpD/. This research was
conducted using the UK Biobank resource (application 18597).
Funding: This work was supported by grants 1R01MH10764901
and 5U01MH09443203 from the National Institute of Mental
Health, as well as the Orion Farmos Research Foundation (V.A.)
and the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation (H.K.F.).
Consortium specific funding is detailed in the supplementary
materials (“Study-specific acknowledgments”). Author
contributions: V.A., A.C., and B.M.N. conceived of and coordinated
the study; V.A., B.B.S., H.K.F., R.W., and P.T. contributed
methodology; B.B.S. and H.K.F. contributed software; V.A.
and B.M.N. conducted the statistical analysis; B.M.N. obtained
funding and provided resources; R.W., J.B., L.D., V.E.-P., G.F.,
P.G., R.M., N.P., S.R., Z.W., and D.Y. were responsible for curation
of disorder-specific data; P.H.L. and C.C. helped with data
interpretation; V.A. and B.M.N. wrote the original draft, and all
authors contributed to review and editing; V.A. provided the
visualization; G.B., C.B., M.Daly, M.Dichgans, S.V.F., R.G., P.H.,
K.K., B.K., C.A.M., A.P., J.S., P.S., J.W., N.W., C.C., A.P., J.S.,
P.S., J.R., A.C., and B.M.N. provided supervision and project
administration; and the remaining authors contributed disorder-specific
sample collection and/or analysis. Consortium-specific personnel lists
can be found in the supplementary materials. Competing interests:
The authors declare no competing interests. Data and m aterials
availability: Data sources for the GWAS summary statistics used in the
study and their availability, as well as the study-specific
acknowledgments, are provided in the supplementary materials
(table S13 and supplementary text, respectively).
The Brainstorm Consortium
Verneri Anttila
1,2,3
*, Brendan Bulik-Sullivan
1,3
, Hilary K. Finucane
2,3,4,5
,
Raymond K. Walters
1,2,3
, Jose Bras
6,7
, Laramie Duncan
1,2,3,8
,
Valentina Escott-Price
9,10
,GuidoJ.Falcone
11,12,13
, Padhraig Gormley
1,2,3,11
,
Rainer Malik
14
,NikolaosA.Patsopoulos
3,15
, Stephan Ripke
1,2,3,16
,
Zhi Wei
17
,DongmeiYu
2,11
,PhilH.Lee
2,11
, Patrick Turley
1,3
,
Benjamin Grenier-Boley
18,19,20
, Vincent Chouraki
18,19,20,21
,
Yoichiro Kamatani
22,23
, Claudine Berr
24,25,26
, Luc Letenneur
27,28
,
Didier Hannequin
29,30
, Philippe Amouyel
18,19,20,21
, Anne Boland
31
,
Jean-François Deleuze
31
, Emmanuelle Duron
32,33
, Badri N. Vardarajan
34
,
Christiane Reitz
35
,AlisonM.Goate
36
, Matthew J. Huentelman
37
,
M. Ilyas Kamboh
38
, Eric B. Larson
39,40
, Ekaterina Rogaeva
41
,
Peter St George-Hyslop
41,42
,HakonHakonarson
43,44,45
,WalterA.Kukull
46
,
Lindsay A. Farrer
47
, Lisa L. Barnes
48,49,50
,ThomasG.Beach
51
,
F. Yesim Demirci
38
, Elizabeth Head
52
, Christine M. Hulette
53
,
Gregory A. Jicha
54
,JohnS.K.Kauwe
55
, Jeffrey A. Kaye
56
,
James B. Leverenz
57
, Allan I. Levey
58
, Andrew P. Lieberman
59
,
Vernon S. Pankratz
60
, Wayne W. Poon
61
,JosephF.Quinn
62,63
,
Andrew J. Saykin
64
, Lon S. Schneider
65
,AmandaG.Smith
66
,
Joshua A. Sonnen
67,68
,RobertA.Stern
69
, Vivianna M. Van Deerlin
70
,
Linda J. Van Eldik
52
, Denise Harold
71
, Giancarlo Russo
72
,
David C. Rubinsztein
73,74
, Anthony Bayer
75
,MagdaTsolaki
76,77
,
Petra Proitsi
78
,NickC.Fox
79,6
, Harald Hampel
80,81,82,83
, Michael J. Owen
84,85
,
Simon Mead
86
, Peter Passmore
87
, Kevin Morgan
88
,
Markus M. Nöthen
89,90
, Martin Rossor
91
, Michelle K. Lupton
92,93
,
Per Hoffmann
89,90,94,95
, Johannes Kornhuber
96
,BrianLawlor
97
,
Andrew McQuillin
98
, Ammar Al-Chalabi
99,100
,JoshuaC.Bis
101
,
Agustin Ruiz
102,103
,MercèBoada
102
,SudhaSeshadri
104,105,106
,
Alexa Beiser
107,108,106
,KennethRice
109
,SvenJ.vanderLee
110
,
Philip L. De Jager
111
, Daniel H. Geschwind
112,113,114
,
Matthias Riemenschneider
115
, Steffi Riedel-Heller
116
, Jerome I. Rotter
117
,
Gerhard Ransmayr
118
, Bradley T. Hyman
12,13
, Carlos Cruchaga
120
,
Montserrat Alegret
102
, Bendik Winsvold
121,122
, Priit Palta
123,124
,
Kai-How Farh
125,3
, Ester Cuenca-Leon
11,3,2
, Nicholas Furlotte
126
,
Tobias Kurth
127
, Lannie Ligthart
128
, Gisela M.Terwindt
129
,
Tobias Freilinger
130,131
, Caroline Ran
132
, Scott D.Gordon
92
,
Guntram Borck
133
, Hieab H.H. Adams
110,134
, Terho Lehtimäki
135
,
Juho Wedenoja
136,137
, Julie E. Buring
138
, Markus Schürks
139
,
Maria Hrafnsdottir
140
, Jouke-Jan Hottenga
128,141
,BrendaPenninx
142
,
Ville Artto
143
, Mari Kaunisto
123
,SalliVepsäläinen
143
,
Nicholas G. Martin
92
, Grant W. Montgomery
92,144
, Mitja I. Kurki
1,3,11,123
,
Eija Hämäläinen
123
, Hailiang Huang
1,2,145
, Jie Huang
146,147
,
Cynthia Sandor
148
, Caleb Webber
148,10
, Bertram Muller-Myhsok
149,150,151
,
Stefan Schreiber
152,153
, Veikko Salomaa
154
,ElizabethLoehrer
155
,
Hartmut Göbel
156
, Alfons Macaya
157
,PatriciaPozo-Rosich
158,159
,
Thomas Hansen
160,161
,ThomasWerge
161,162,163
, Jaakko Kaprio
123,137
,
Andres Metspalu
124
, Christian Kubisch
164
, Michel D. Ferrari
129
,
Andrea C. Belin
132
, Arn M.J.M. Maagdenberg
166,129
,John-AnkerZwart
167
,
Dorret Boomsma
168.128
, Nicholas Eriksson
126
, Jes Olesen
160
,
Daniel I. Chasman
169,13
,DaleR.Nyholt
170
,AndrejaAvbersek
171
,
Larry Baum
172
, Samuel Berkovic
173
,JonathanBradfield
174
,
Russell Buono
175,176,177
, Claudia B. Catarino
171,178
, Patrick Cossette
179
,
Peter De Jonghe
180,181,182
, Chantal Depondt
183
, Dennis Dlugos
184,185
,
Thomas N. Ferraro
186,187
, Jacqueline French
188
, Helle Hjalgrim
189
,
Jennifer Jamnadas-Khoda
171,190
, Reetta Kälviäinen
192,193
,
Wolfram S. Kunz
194,195
, Holger Lerche
131
,CostinLeu
196
,
Dick Lindhout
197,198
, Warren Lo
199,200
, Daniel Lowenstein
201
,
Mark McCormack
202,203
, Rikke S. Møller
204,205
,AnneMolloy
206
,
Ping-Wing Ng
207,208
,KarenOliver
209
, Michael Privitera
210,211
,
Rodney Radtke
212
, Ann-Kathrin Ruppert
213
, Thomas Sander
213
,
Steven Schachter
214,12,13
, Christoph Schankin
215,216
,
Ingrid Scheffer
217,218,219
, Susanne Schoch
220
, Sanjay M. Sisodiya
221,222
,
Philip Smith
223
, Michael Sperling
224
, Pasquale Striano
225
,
Rainer Surges
226,227
, G. Neil Thomas
228
, Frank Visscher
229
,
Christopher D. Whelan
202
, Federico Zara