“The Genetics of the Mood Disorder Spectrum: Genome-Wide Association Analyses of over 185,000 Cases and 439,000 Controls”, Jonathan R. I. Coleman, Héléna A. Gaspar, Julien Bryois, Enda M. Byrne, Andreas J. Forstner, Peter A. Holmans, Christiaan A. de Leeuw, Manuel Mattheisen, Andrew McQuillin, Jennifer M. Whitehead Pavlides, Tune H. Pers, Stephan Ripke, Eli Ayumi Stahl, Stacy Steinberg, Vassily Trubetskoy, Maciej Trzaskowski, Yunpeng Wang, Liam Abbott, Abdel Abdellaoui, Mark J. Adams, Annelie Nordin Adolfsson, Esben Agerbo, Huda Akil, Diego Albani, Ney Alliey-Rodriguez, Thomas D. Als, Till F. M. Andlauer, Adebayo Anjorin, Verneri Antilla, Sandra Van der Auwera, Swapnil Awasthi, Silviu-Alin Bacanu, Judith A. Badner, Marie Bækvad-Hansen, Jack D. Barchas, Nicholas Bass, Michael Bauer, Aartjan T. F. Beekman, Richard Belliveau, Sarah E. Bergen, Tim B. Bigdeli, Elisabeth B. Binder, Erlend Bøen, Marco Boks, James Boocock, Monika Budde, William Bunney, Margit Burmeister, Henriette N. Buttenschøn, Jonas Bybjerg-Grauholm, William Byerley, Na Cai, Miquel Casas, Enrique Castelao, Felecia Cerrato, Pablo Cervantes, Kimberly Chambert, Alexander W. Charney, Danfeng Chen, Jane Hvarregaard Christensen, Claire Churchhouse, David St Clair, Toni-Kim Clarke, Lucía Colodro-Conde, William Coryell, Baptiste Couvy-Duchesne, David W. Craig, Gregory E. Crawford, Cristiana Cruceanu, Piotr M. Czerski, Anders Martin Dale, Gail Davies, Ian J. Deary, Franziska Degenhardt, Jurgen Del-Favero, J. Raymond DePaulo, Eske M. Derks, Nese Direk, Srdjan Djurovic, Amanda L. Dobbyn, Conor V. Dolan, Ashley Dumont, Erin C. Dunn, Thalia C. Eley, Torbjørn Elvsåshagen, Valentina Escott-Price, Chun Chieh Fan, Hilary K. Finucane, Sascha B. Fischer, Matthew Flickinger, Jerome C. Foo, Tatiana M. Foroud, Liz Forty, Josef Frank, Christine Fraser, Nelson B. Freimer, Louise Frisén, Katrin Gade, Diane Gage, Julie Garnham, Claudia Giambartolomei, Fernando S. Goes, Jaqueline Goldstein, Scott D. Gordon, Katherine Gordon-Smith, Elaine K. Green, Melissa J. Green, Tiffany A. Greenwood, Jakob Grove, Weihua Guan, Lynsey S. Hall, Marian L. Hamshere, Christine Søholm Hansen, Thomas F. Hansen, Martin Hautzinger, Urs Heilbronner, Albert M. van Hemert, Stefan Herms, Ian B. Hickie, Maria Hipolito, Per Hoffmann, Dominic Holland, Georg Homuth, Carsten Horn, Jouke-Jan Hottenga, Laura Huckins, Marcus Ising, Stéphane Jamain, Rick Jansen, Jessica S. Johnson, Simone de Jong, Eric Jorgenson, Anders Juréus, Radhika Kandaswamy, Robert Karlsson, James L. Kennedy, Farnush Farhadi Hassan Kiadeh, Sarah Kittel-Schneider, James A. Knowles, Manolis Kogevinas, Isaac S. Kohane, Anna C. Koller, Julia Kraft, Warren W. Kretzschmar, Jesper Krogh, Ralph Kupka, Zoltán Kutalik, Catharina Lavebratt, Jacob Lawrence, William B. Lawson, Markus Leber, Phil H. Lee, Shawn E. Levy, Jun Z. Li, Yihan Li, Penelope A. Lind, Chunyu Liu, Loes M. Olde Loohuis, Anna Maaser, Donald J. MacIntyre, Dean F. MacKinnon, Pamela B. Mahon, Wolfgang Maier, Robert M. Maier, Jonathan Marchini, Lina Martinsson, Hamdi Mbarek, Steve McCarroll, Patrick McGrath, Peter McGuffin, Melvin G. McInnis, James D. McKay, Helena Medeiros, Sarah E. Medland, Divya Mehta, Fan Meng, Christel M. Middeldorp, Evelin Mihailov, Yuri Milaneschi, Lili Milani, Saira Saeed Mirza, Francis M. Mondimore, Grant W. Montgomery, Derek W. Morris, Sara Mostafavi, Thomas W. Mühleisen, Niamh Mullins, Matthias Nauck, Bernard Ng, Hoang Nguyen, Caroline M. Nievergelt, Michel G. Nivard, Evaristus A. Nwulia, Dale R. Nyholt, Claire O’Donovan, Paul F. O’Reilly, Anil P. S. Ori, Lilijana Oruc, Urban Ösby, Hogni Oskarsson, Jodie N. Painter, José Guzman Parra, Carsten Bøcker Pedersen, Marianne Giørtz Pedersen, Amy Perry, Roseann E. Peterson, Erik Pettersson, Wouter J. Peyrot, Andrea Pfennig, Giorgio Pistis, Shaun M. Purcell, Jorge A. Quiroz, Per Qvist, Eline J. Regeer, Andreas Reif, Céline S. Reinbold, John P. Rice, Brien P. Riley, Fabio Rivas, Margarita Rivera, Panos Roussos, Douglas M. Ruderfer, Euijung Ryu, Cristina Sánchez-Mora, Alan F. Schatzberg, William A. Scheftner, Robert Schoevers, Nicholas J. Schork, Eva C. Schulte, Tatyana Shehktman, Ling Shen, Jianxin Shi, Paul D. Shilling, Stanley I. Shyn, Engilbert Sigurdsson, Claire Slaney, Olav B. Smeland, Johannes H. Smit, Daniel J. Smith, Janet L. Sobell, Anne T. Spijker, Michael Steffens, John S. Strauss, Fabian Streit, Jana Strohmaier, Szabolcs Szelinger, Katherine E. Tansey, Henning Teismann, Alexander Teumer, Robert C. Thompson, Wesley Thompson, Pippa A. Thomson, Thorgeir E. Thorgeirsson, Matthew Traylor, Jens Treutlein, André G. Uitterlinden, Daniel Umbricht, Helmut Vedder, Alexander Viktorin, Peter M. Visscher, Weiqing Wang, Stanley J. Watson, Bradley T. Webb, Cynthia Shannon Weickert, as W. Weickert, Shantel Marie Weinsheimer, Jürgen Wellmann, Gonneke Willemsen, Stephanie H. Witt, Yang Wu, Hualin S. Xi, Wei Xu, Jian Yang, Allan H. Young, Peter Zandi, Peng Zhang, Futao Zhang, Sebastian Zollner, Rolf Adolfsson, Ingrid Agartz, Martin Alda, Volker Arolt, Lena Backlund, Bernhard T. Baune, Frank Bellivier, Klaus Berger, Wade H. Berrettini, Joanna M. Biernacka, Douglas H. R. Blackwood, Michael Boehnke, Dorret I. Boomsma, Aiden Corvin, Nicholas Craddock, Mark J. Daly, Udo Dannlowski, Enrico Domenici, Katharina Domschke, Tõnu Esko, Bruno Etain, Mark Frye, Janice M. Fullerton, Elliot S. Gershon, E. J. C. de Geus, Michael Gill, Fernando Goes, Hans J. Grabe, Maria Grigoroiu-Serbanescu, Steven P. Hamilton, Joanna Hauser, Caroline Hayward, Andrew C. Heath, David Hougaard, Christina M. Hultman, Ian Jones, Lisa A. Jones, René S. Kahn, Kenneth S. Kendler, George Kirov, Stefan Kloiber, Mikael Landén, Marion Leboyer, Glyn Lewis, Qingqin S. Li, Jolanta Lissowska, Susanne Lucae, Pamela A. F. Madden, Patrik K. Magnusson, Nicholas G. Martin, Fermin Mayoral, Susan L. McElroy, Andrew M. McIntosh, Francis J. McMahon, Ingrid Sigfrid Melle, Andres Metspalu, Philip B. Mitchell, Gunnar Morken, Ole Mors, Preben Bo Mortensen, Bertram Müller-Myhsok, Richard M. Myers, Benjamin M. Neale, Vishwajit Nimgaonkar, Merete Nordentoft, Markus M. Nöthen, Michael C. O’Donovan, Ketil J. Oedegaard, Michael J. Owen, Sara A. Paciga, Carlos Pato, Michele T. Pato, Nancy L. Pedersen, Brenda W. J. H. Penninx, Roy H. Perlis, David J. Porteous, Danielle Posthuma, James B. Potash, Martin Preisig, Josep Antoni Ramos-Quiroga, Marta Ribasés, Marcella Rietschel, Guy A. Rouleau, Catherine Schaefer, Martin Schalling, Peter R. Schofield, Thomas G. Schulze, Alessandro Serretti, Jordan W. Smoller, Hreinn Stefansson, Kari Stefansson, Eystein Stordal, Henning Tiemeier, Gustavo Turecki, Rudolf Uher, Arne E. Vaaler, Eduard Vieta, John B. Vincent, Henry Völzke, Myrna M. Weissman, Thomas Werge, Ole A. Andreassen, Anders Børglum, Sven Cichon, Howard J. Edenberg, Arianna Di Florio, John Kelsoe, Douglas F. Levinson, Cathryn M. Lewis, John I. Nurnberger, Roel A. Ophoff, Laura J. Scott, Pamela Sklar, Patrick F. Sullivan, Naomi R. Wray, Gerome Breen2018-08-13 (, , ; similar)⁠:

Mood disorders affect 10–20% of the population, ranging from brief, mild episodes to severe, incapacitating conditions that markedly impact lives. Multiple approaches have shown considerable sharing of genetic risk factors between unipolar and bipolar mood disorders.

We use data from the largest genome-wide association studies of major depression (MD) and bipolar disorder (BD) to investigate the molecular basis of the shared genetic liability to mood disorders. We meta-analysed the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) MD and BD cohorts, and an additional MD cohort from UK Biobank (185,285 cases, 439,741 controls, non-overlapping n = 609,424).

73 loci reached genome-wide statistical-significance in the meta-analysis, with additional loci in subtype and depression-only analyses. More genome-wide statistically-significant loci from PGC MD (39/44, 89% of the PGC MD loci) than PGC BD (4/19, 21%) reached genome-wide statistical-significance in the meta-analysis. Genetic correlations calculated between MD and BD subtypes revealed that type II BD correlates strongly with MD. Integrating the results with systems biology information, we implicate pathways and neuronal subtypes which highlight similarities but also potential differences between MD and BD.

Our results reflected MD more than BD, perhaps due to the larger sample size for MD, but also perhaps because depression is their predominant common feature. Overall, these results provide evidence for a genetic mood disorders spectrum.