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Association studies in psychiatric genetics: what are we doing?

Molecular Psychiatry volume 7, pages 827–828 (2002)Cite this article

SIR – Psychiatric conditions are generally assumed to involve a complex interplay of multiple genetic and environmental risk factors. However, a review of association studies published in Molecular Psychiatry shows that this complexity receives very little attention. We argue that the use of statistical modeling techniques to integrate measured genotypes in etiological models of behavior and mental health will: (a) facilitate the detection of genes; and (b) improve our understanding of psychiatric conditions.

The evidence from family studies indicating that genetic factors are involved in psychiatric conditions seems to justify the current worldwide research effort to identify the specific allelic variants. A frequently used approach is to type loci on the basis of a biological argument or previous evidence from a linkage scan, and examine whether its alleles are statistically related to the phenotype. In Table 1 we categorized all such association studies published in 2000 in Molecular Psychiatry. Only studies that presented original data and involved health and behavioral outcomes in humans were considered. The first category pertained to studies that tested for effects on the prevalence or means of a single phenotype using the genotype as the sole ‘independent’ variable. These studies typically performed tests for differences in genotype–haplotype frequencies in cases and controls, preferential transmission of the high risk allele from parents to cases, or differences in the means of genotype groups. The second category involved studies with multiple risk factors. These studies typically used logistic or multiple regression. A further distinction was made to indicate whether the additional risk variables were: (1) the demographic characteristics sex, age, or race; (2) theoretically meaningful such as age of onset, personality, biochemical markers, or other candidate genes; and (3) environmental characteristics such as poverty.

Table 1 Association studies published in 2000 in Molecular Psychiatry
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  1. Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Richmond, VA, USA

    E J C G van den Oord

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  1. E J C G van den Oord
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Correspondence to E J C G van den Oord.

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van den Oord, E. Association studies in psychiatric genetics: what are we doing?. Mol Psychiatry 7, 827–828 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.mp.4001136

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