Most psychiatric disorders are moderately to highly heritable. The degree to which genetic variation is unique to individual disorders or shared across disorders is unclear. To examine shared genetic etiology, we use genome-wide genotype data from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) for cases and controls in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We apply univariate and bivariate methods for the estimation of genetic variation within and covariation between disorders. SNPs explained 17–29% of the variance in liability. The genetic correlation calculated using common SNPs was high between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (0.68 ± 0.04 s.e.), moderate between schizophrenia and major depressive disorder (0.43 ± 0.06 s.e.), bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder (0.47 ± 0.06 s.e.), and ADHD and major depressive disorder (0.32 ± 0.07 s.e.), low between schizophrenia and ASD (0.16 ± 0.06 s.e.) and non-significant for other pairs of disorders as well as between psychiatric disorders and the negative control of Crohn’s disease. This empirical evidence of shared genetic etiology for psychiatric disorders can inform nosology and encourages the investigation of common pathophysiologies for related disorders.

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We conducted a combined genome-wide association (GWAS) analysis of 7,481 individuals affected with bipolar disorder and 9,250 control individuals within the Psychiatric Genomewide Association Study Consortium Bipolar Disorder group (PGC-BD). We performed a replication study in which we tested 34 independent SNPs in 4,493 independent bipolar disorder cases and 42,542 independent controls and found strong evidence for replication. In the replication sample, 18 of 34 SNPs had P value < 0.05, and 31 of 34 SNPs had signals with the same direction of effect (P = 3.8 × 10−7). In the combined analysis of all 63,766 subjects (11,974 cases and 51,792 controls), genome-wide significant evidence for association was confirmed for CACNA1C and found for a novel gene ODZ4. In a combined analysis of non-overlapping schizophrenia and bipolar GWAS samples we observed strong evidence for association with SNPs in CACNA1C and in the region of NEK4/ITIH1,3,4. Pathway analysis identified a pathway comprised of subunits of calcium channels enriched in the bipolar disorder association intervals. The strength of the replication data implies that increasing samples sizes in bipolar disorder will confirm many additional loci.

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Bipolar disorder (BD) is a heritable mental illness with complex etiology. We performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 41,917 BD cases and 371,549 controls of European ancestry, which identified 64 associated genomic loci. BD risk alleles were enriched in genes in synaptic signaling pathways and brain-expressed genes, particularly those with high specificity of expression in neurons of the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. Significant signal enrichment was found in genes encoding targets of antipsychotics, calcium channel blockers, antiepileptics, and anesthetics. Integrating eQTL data implicated 15 genes robustly linked to BD via gene expression, encoding druggable targets such as HTR6, MCHR1, DCLK3 and FURIN. Analyses of BD subtypes indicated high but imperfect genetic correlation between BD type I and II and identified additional associated loci. Together, these results advance our understanding of the biological etiology of BD, identify novel therapeutic leads, and prioritize genes for functional follow-up studies.