“Bi-Ancestral Depression GWAS in the Million Veteran Program and Meta-Analysis in >1.2 Million Individuals Highlight New Therapeutic Directions”, Daniel F. Levey, Murray B. Stein, Frank R. Wendt, Gita A. Pathak, Hang Zhou, Mihaela Aslan, Rachel Quaden, Kelly M. Harrington, Yaira Z. Nunez, Cassie Overstreet, Krishnan Radhakrishnan, Gerard Sanacora, Andrew M. McIntosh, Jingchunzi Shi, Suyash S. Shringarpure, John Concato, Renato Polimanti, Joel Gelernter2021-05-27 (heritability, depression; similar)⁠:

Major depressive disorder is the most common neuropsychiatric disorder, affecting 11% of veterans.

Here we report results of a large meta-analysis of depression using data from the Million Veteran Program, 23andMe, UK Biobank and FinnGen, including individuals of European ancestry (n = 1,154,267; 340,591 cases) and African ancestry (n = 59,600; 25,843 cases).

Transcriptome-wide association study analyses revealed statistically-significant associations with expression of NEGR1 in the hypothalamus and DRD2 in the nucleus accumbens, among others. We fine-mapped 178 genomic risk loci, and we identified likely pathogenicity in these variants and overlapping gene expression for 17 genes from our transcriptome-wide association study, including TRAF3. Finally, we were able to show substantial replications of our findings in a large independent cohort (n = 1,342,778) provided by 23andMe.

This study sheds light on the genetic architecture of depression and provides new insight into the interrelatedness of complex psychiatric traits.

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