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  • Letter to the Editor
  • Published:

Don't give up on GWAS

  • P Sullivan1
  • on behalf of 96 Psychiatric Genetics Investigators*

Molecular Psychiatry volume 17, pages 2–3 (2012)Cite this article

Psychiatric diseases are of major public health importance owing to their enormous morbidity, mortality and personal/societal cost. Little is known for certain about the etiology of these diseases, and treatment, detection and prevention strategies are not directed by knowledge of pathophysiology. As family history is a major risk factor, genetic approaches are critically important for most psychiatric disorders.

The initial set of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) using microarrays to test for the role of common genetic variants for psychiatric disorders did not unambiguously identify risk or protective loci. This ‘disappointing’ pattern of results was also seen in many other diseases to which GWAS was applied. It rapidly became apparent that many ‘failures’ were merely due to low power.

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Author notes

  1. listed in Supplementary Table S1

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  1. Genetics, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    P Sullivan

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  1. P Sullivan
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on behalf of 96 Psychiatric Genetics Investigators*

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Correspondence to P Sullivan.

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The author declares no conflict of interest.

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Supplementary Information accompanies the paper on the Molecular Psychiatry website

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Sullivan, P., on behalf of 96 Psychiatric Genetics Investigators*. Don't give up on GWAS. Mol Psychiatry 17, 2–3 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/mp.2011.94

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