Exploring the causal effect of placental physiology in susceptibility to mental and addictive disorders: a Mendelian randomization study

Abstract

Background: Epidemiological studies have linked low birth weight to psychiatric disorders, including substance use disorders. Genomic analyses suggest a role of placental physiology on psychiatric risk. We investigated whether this association is causally related to impaired trophoblast function. Methods: We conducted a two-sample summary-data Mendelian randomization study using as instrumental variables genetic variants strongly associated with birth weight, whose effect is exerted through the fetal genome, and are located near genes with differential expression in trophoblasts. Eight psychiatric and substance use disorders with > 10,000 samples were included as outcomes. The inverse variance weighted method was used as the main analysis and several sensitivity analyses were performed for those significant results. Results: The inverse variance weighted estimate, based on 14 instrumental variables, revealed an association, after correction for multiple tests, between birth weight and broadly-defined depression (beta=-0.165, 95% CI=-0.282 to -0.047, P=0.0059). Sensitivity analyses revealed absence of heterogeneity in the effect of instrumental variables, confirmed by leave-one-out analysis, MR_Egger intercept and MR_PRESSO. The effect was consistent using robust methods. Reverse causality was not detected. The effect was specifically linked to genetic variants near genes involved in trophoblast physiology instead of genes with fetal effect on birth weight or involved in placenta development. Conclusion: Impaired trophoblast functioning, probably leading to reduced fetal brain oxygen and nutrient supply, is causally related to broadly-defined depression. Considering the therapeutic potential of some agents to treat fetal growth restriction, further research on the effect of trophoblast physiology on mental disorders may have future implications in prevention.

Maternal obesity and offspring neurodevelopment are associated with hypoxic gene expression in term human placenta

“…Transcriptome wide association studies (TWAS) identified 139 placenta schizophrenia-specific risk genes, and of those predicted to be upregulated in schizophrenia, there was significant enrichment for expression in EVTs 14 . Emerging evidence from Mendelian randomization supports a causal role of trophoblast physiology (and inflammation from fetal macrophages) in the development of offspring depression 23,24 . In particular, EVTs and villous cytotrophoblasts were significantly enriched for genes whose variants are associated with offspring depression, and hypoxia is a postulated mechanism 24 .…”

“…Emerging evidence from Mendelian randomization supports a causal role of trophoblast physiology (and inflammation from fetal macrophages) in the development of offspring depression 23,24 . In particular, EVTs and villous cytotrophoblasts were significantly enriched for genes whose variants are associated with offspring depression, and hypoxia is a postulated mechanism 24 . Cultured trophoblast cells exposed to hypoxia release factors into media that caused damage to neurons, including decreased dendrite length.…”

“…Single-cell RNA seq (scRNA-seq) or single-nucleus RNA-seq (snRNA-seq) can offer insights that are missed by bulk, and snRNA-seq in particular can offer insight into syncytiotrophoblasts (SCTs) 21 , since their multinucleated nature leads to poor recovery from scRNA-seq. To our knowledge, there is only one study that examined cell-type specific transcriptomic changes associated with maternal BMI in humans, but it was limited to maternal immune cell types in the decidua 22 , which misses some of the key cell types of interest in offspring development-including fetal macrophages (FM) 13,23 and trophoblasts 24,25 .…”