Schizophrenia is often misunderstood and highly complex. Learn about its prevalence and health impact in the WHO Fact Sheet 💡: www.who.int/news-room/fa...

1/ 🧵 For 10+ years, the Schizophrenia Working Group of the PGC has been dedicated to understanding the genetic risk factors for schizophrenia.

Hi from the PGC Schizophrenia working group! During the next 2 weeks, we will be posting about schizophrenia genetics and related topics. Stay tuned!

Today is #WorldSuicidePreventionDay. Worried someone might be struggling with suicidal thoughts? Your presence can be powerful. A simple check-in could be the lifeline they need. 💙 Learn more about #SuicidePrevention 👉 bit.ly/4phPYKi

Latin America has experienced an increase in suicide rate, contrasting with a global decline. We review possible reasons for this here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Led by Dr. Brenda Cabrera-Mendoza and @renatopolimanti.bsky.social, 1st publication from the LAGC Suicide Working Group.

On 10 September, the world comes together for #WorldSuicidePreventionDay under the theme, Changing the Narrative on Suicide. This year, we’re making resources more accessible than ever - translated into more languages, to reach more communities worldwide. bit.ly/469incZ

Brenda Cabrera-Mendoza, postdoctoral associate at Yale Psychiatry, has been awarded a MQ US Fellow grant from MQ Mental Health Research. Her project will integrate genetic and clinical data to improve suicide risk stratification.

Over the next couple of tweets, we will highlight some of the funded research projects in the PGC SUI Workgroup, which are working toward understanding the genetics of suicide. #PGCSUI #suicidegenetics

This fall members of the PGC Suicide Workgroup will be presenting at the upcoming IASR/AFSP International Summit on Suicide Research and the World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics. We look forward to sharing our latest findings with the scientific community. #WCPG2025 #IASR2025

📢 For the next two weeks, the Suicide Working Group is taking over this space. September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month — a time to break stigma, share resources, and highlight research and action that can save lives. #SuicidePrevention #SuicideAwarenessMonth

Excited to share that our manuscript describing a multi-ancestry GWAS of nicotine dependence has now been published: doi.org/10.1017/S003...

"A contextual genomic perspective on physical activity and its relationship to health, well being and illness" led by Marco Galimberti at @yaleschoolofmed.bsky.social and US Dept. of Veterans Affairs is now online at Nature Genetics (@natureportfolio.nature.com) Link: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

‪Attending the 2025 @behaviorgenetic.bsky.social Meeting in Atlanta? Be sure to check out some exciting work from members of the PGC-SUD working group:

‪Attending the @rsaofficial.bsky.social meeting in New Orleans? Be sure to check out some exciting work from members of the PGC-SUD working group:

New preprint alert 📢: First genome-wide significant loci identified for panic attacks and panic disorder

That’s a wrap for the #MDD & #Anxiety takeover, thanks for joining us! Special thank you to Outreach Committee Liaisons @karmelchoi.bsky.social (MDD) & @abiterkuile.bsky.social (Anxiety) and all post contributors.

(1/2) GWAS studies of anxiety and depression often include cases who have both, making it hard to tease apart genetic influences. Tesfaye et al. recently showed how unaccounted comorbidity contributes to high genetic overlap in genome-wide studies. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

AMBER is a collaborative effort to identify the determinants of antidepressant response, by integrating genomic/cellular data, EHRs, and patient perspectives. Check out this project and reach out to PI @cathrynlewis.bsky.social to learn more or collaborate! www.kcl.ac.uk/research/amb...

(1/n) Can we use antidepressant patterns, captured by prescriptions, to assess whether (and why) treatment was effective? Lo et al. studied patients who switched from first-line antidepressants to another antidepressant. Switching can imply the drug was not effective for depression symptoms.

(1/n) 🔍 Can we predict who will experience antidepressant side effects? New study led by Danyang Li used machine learning in @gladstudy.bsky.social to predict side effects & discontinuation across SSRIs, SNRIs, and tricyclic antidepressants in over 4,000 participants.

(1/2) Most studies on antidepressants use data from clinical records or electronic health records. What do different patients think about the antidepressants they took? 💭 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

(1/2) Only one-third of people taking antidepressants for depression respond to the first drug they are prescribed and we know little about WHICH drug will work for each patient.

Day 4 of the 2nd Week of #MDD & #Anxiety takeover! How do genetic differences shape individual responses to treatment?This is what recent research has begun to investigate.. 💊

(1/4) 🔬 How can we use #genetics to discover promising depression or anxiety drug targets? Check out the drug repurposing approach in these two studies aiming to identify new anxiety & depression treatments to test and validate in further studies.

Day 3 of the 2nd Week of #MDD & #Anxiety takeover! Today, we're looking into how genetics could inform drug discovery for these common conditions.

(1/2) Do anxiety and depression share inflammatory roots? In ~55k from the Dutch Lifelines cohort, higher C-reactive protein (CRP) was associated with ⬆️ depressive disorder, ⬇️ positive affect, and ⬆️ negative affect.

In a recent interview, @jonicoleman.bsky.social discusses the importance of understanding depression beyond the diagnosis, including its genetic and environmental influences. ▶️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHMY...

(1/1) 🧬Can genetics of functional impairment be captured by depression & anxiety symptom severity? Despite its role in diagnosis and importance to patients, functional impairment is often overlooked in research & shows only moderate phenotypic correlations with depression & anxiety symptoms.

Day 2 of the 2nd Week of #MDD & #Anxiety takeover! Today we’re diving into how depression & anxiety may share everyday presentations, like functional impairment.

(1/2) How do polygenic risk scores explain solo vs. comorbid diagnoses of depression and anxiety? Using EHR data from almost 178k people, Coombes and colleagues studied how genetic factors contribute to comorbidity.

Tabrizi et al 2025 found both twin heritability (79% vs 41%/50%) & polygenic contributions were greater for comorbid anxiety-depression than for anxiety or depression only, suggesting stronger genetic influences when these conditions co-occur. bsky.app/profile/pgcg...

It’s Week 2 of the PGC #MDD & #Anxiety takeover! Is genetic liability for comorbid anxiety & depression greater than for the occurrence of anxiety or depression alone? Two key recent studies address this..

(1/9) 📣 OUT NOW! 📣 So excited to share that our systematic review and meta-analysis on the autism polygenic score is now published in JAACAP Open @jaacapjournals.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1016/j.ja... A (long) thread of our main findings ⤵️

Very pleased to see our paper describing the @ukbiobank.bsky.social second online mental health questionnaire has now been published in @plosone.org! This describes the origin of the resource as well as the data. Fantastic work by Katrina Davis in leading this 👏👏👏 dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

Day 4 of the #MDD & #Anxiety takeover! Depression & anxiety have high genome-wide genetic overlap, but what about at the level of specific genomic loci? Tesfaye et al found 11,400 shared MDD-ANX variants (85% overlap) & 47 shared loci

Revisiting a key #GWAS published earlier this year 🧵↓ This multi-ancestry, multi-site study identified >600 loci (almost 300 novel) associated with major #depression, providing new insights into its genetic architecture, including drug repurposing opportunities.

1/n 🧵 Anxiety disorder GWAS from the PGC Anxiety working group (Strom et al 2024 pre-print): Genome-wide association study of major anxiety disorders in 122,341 European-ancestry cases identifies 58 loci and highlights GABAergic signaling

🧬 It's Day 2 of the #MDD & #Anxiety working groups takeover! Today we're diving into how genetics plays a role in both anxiety and depression, and key findings from twin studies to genomics 🧵 #PGCgenetics #genomics (1/7)

Many psychiatric disorders co-occur across the lifespan, and anxiety and depression especially go hand in hand. The Dunedin Longitudinal Study found that, by adulthood, anxiety and depression are more strongly related with each other than with other conditions (1/4)

Did you know just how intertwined anxiety and depression can be? Studies show that >60% of people with anxiety also experience depression, and vice versa. This is called #comorbidity (1/4)

Hello from the PGC Anxiety and Major Depressive Disorder Working Groups 👋 Get ready for two weeks of #genomics at the intersection of #depression and #anxiety as we take over this PGC account (1/3)

If you want to know more about autism and the genetics of autism, feel free to visit: tinyurl.com/hjyyrjtr

In a Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS) genetic variants are associated with traits, disorders or diseases. 🧬 At specific places in the genome, single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are measured in participants to see which variants are related with traits such as autism.

Some autistic people are diagnosed early 👶, others much later 🧑‍🎓. This new preprint finds that age of diagnosis links to different genetic and behavioral profiles. Such axes help explain why autism can look so different from one person to another. tinyurl.com/cexv5uh5

Extremely excited to share the first effort of the Revived Genomics of Personality Consortium: A highly-powered, comprehensive GWAS of the Big Five personality traits in 1.14 million participants from 46 cohorts. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Abstract submissions for the World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics (WCPG) 2025 are closing soon! Submit your abstract today and be part of the conversation shaping our field. ispg.net/wcpg-2025/ #WCPG2025 #PsychiatricGenetics

You will have seen this post by @tedmond.bsky.social‬ on our new GWAS of Personality. He says you should read the paper (you should), I want to write a thread to entice you. Because social media has shredded your attention as it has mine, I promise there is JUICE & BEEF in this thread!

ICYMI: New online! Genomics of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder

🔎Looking for a clear overview of autism genetics?🔍 This 2021 Psychological Medicine paper provides just that! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...