“Using Genetics to Examine a General Liability to Childhood Psychopathology”, Lucy Riglin, Ajay K. Thapar, Beate Leppert, Joanna Martin, Alexander Richards, Richard Anney, George Davey Smith, Kate Tilling, Evie Stergiakouli, Benjamin B. Lahey, Michael C. O’Donovan, Stephan Collishaw, Anita Thapar2018-11-21 (, , , , ; similar)⁠:

Background: Psychiatric disorders show phenotypic as well as genetic overlaps. Factor analyses of child and adult psychopathology have found that phenotypic overlaps largely can be explained by a latent general “p” factor that reflects general liability to psychopathology. We investigated whether shared genetic liability across disorders would be reflected in associations between multiple different psychiatric polygenic risk scores (PRS) and a ‘general psychopathology’ factor in childhood.

Method: The sample was a UK, prospective, population-based cohort (ALSPAC), including data on psychopathology at age 7 (n = 8161) years. PRS were generated from large published genome-wide association studies.

Outcomes

The general psychopathology factor was associated with both schizophrenia PRS and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) PRS, whereas there was no strong evidence of association with major depressive disorder and autism spectrum disorder PRS. Schizophrenia PRS was also associated with a specific “emotional” problems factor.

Interpretation

Our findings suggest that genetic liability to schizophrenia and ADHD may contribute to shared genetic risks across childhood psychiatric diagnoses at least partly via the ‘general psychopathology’ factor. However, the pattern of observations could not be explained by a general “p” factor on its own.

Funding

This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust (204895/Z/16/Z).Introduction