Investigating the shared genetic architecture between depression and subcortical volumes

Mengge Liu, Lu Wang, Yujie Zhang, Haoyang Dong, Caihong Wang, Yayuan Chen, Qian Qian, Nannan Zhang, Shaoying Wang, Guoshu Zhao, Zhihui Zhang, Minghuan Lei, Sijia Wang (), Qiyu Zhao () and Feng Liu ()
Additional contact information
Mengge Liu: Tianjin Medical University General Hospital
Lu Wang: Tianjin Medical University General Hospital
Yujie Zhang: Tianjin Medical University General Hospital
Haoyang Dong: Tianjin Medical University General Hospital
Caihong Wang: Tianjin Medical University General Hospital
Yayuan Chen: Tianjin Medical University General Hospital
Qian Qian: Tianjin Medical University General Hospital
Nannan Zhang: Tianjin Medical University General Hospital
Shaoying Wang: Tianjin Medical University General Hospital
Guoshu Zhao: Tianjin Medical University General Hospital
Zhihui Zhang: Tianjin Medical University General Hospital
Minghuan Lei: Tianjin Medical University General Hospital
Sijia Wang: Tianjin Medical University General Hospital
Qiyu Zhao: Tianjin Medical University General Hospital
Feng Liu: Tianjin Medical University General Hospital

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Depression, a widespread and highly heritable mental health condition, profoundly affects millions of individuals worldwide. Neuroimaging studies have consistently revealed volumetric abnormalities in subcortical structures associated with depression. However, the genetic underpinnings shared between depression and subcortical volumes remain inadequately understood. Here, we investigate the extent of polygenic overlap using the bivariate causal mixture model (MiXeR), leveraging summary statistics from the largest genome-wide association studies for depression (N = 674,452) and 14 subcortical volumetric phenotypes (N = 33,224). Additionally, we identify shared genomic loci through conditional/conjunctional FDR analyses. MiXeR shows that subcortical volumetric traits share a substantial proportion of genetic variants with depression, with 44 distinct shared loci identified by subsequent conjunctional FDR analysis. These shared loci are predominantly located in intronic regions (58.7%) and non-coding RNA intronic regions (25.4%). The 269 protein-coding genes mapped by these shared loci exhibit specific developmental trajectories, with the expression level of 55 genes linked to both depression and subcortical volumes, and 30 genes linked to cognitive abilities and behavioral symptoms. These findings highlight a shared genetic architecture between depression and subcortical volumetric phenotypes, enriching our understanding of the neurobiological underpinnings of depression.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-52121-y Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-024-52121-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-52121-y

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().