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Polygenic risk scores for schizophrenia and depression linked to OCD

Polygenic prediction of obsessive compulsive symptoms

Molecular Psychiatry volume 23, pages 168–169 (2018)Cite this article

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Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a common neuropsychiatric disorder, causing considerable social impairment and disease burden worldwide.1 OCD is characterized by the presence of a heterogeneous array of 'clinically significant' obsessions and compulsions, in a permanent uncontrollable cycle. It is widely recognized, similarly to what is observed for other psychiatric disorders, that individual differences in the susceptibility to OCD are at least partly genetic.1

Twin and family studies estimate the heritability of OCD to be between 0.27 and 0.50. Molecular genetic studies in epidemiological samples offer evidence for the highly polygenic nature of OCD, i.e., OCD is influenced by large numbers of (common) genetic variants with small-effects.1 This polygenicity is within the expectations, considering the findings on the genetic architecture of other psychiatric traits.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all participants for their cooperation, and Dongmei Yu, Carol Mathews, and the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium TS/OCD workgroup for providing the OCD GWAS summary statistics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Psychology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands,

    N R Zilhão, A Abdellaoui, J J Hottenga & D I Boomsma

  2. Department of Clinical Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    N R Zilhão & D C Cath

  3. Department of Psychiatry, Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    D J A Smit

  4. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and University Medical Center Groningen,, GGz Drenthe, Assen, The Netherlands

    D C Cath

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  1. N R Zilhão
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  2. A Abdellaoui
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Correspondence to N R Zilhão.

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Zilhão, N., Abdellaoui, A., Smit, D. et al. Polygenic prediction of obsessive compulsive symptoms. Mol Psychiatry 23, 168–169 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/mp.2017.248

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