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Genetics of disease

Associations with depression

Nature volume 523, pages 539–540 (2015)Cite this article

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Two genetic regions associated with major depressive disorder have been revealed for the first time, through whole-genome sequencing of a population of Han Chinese women. See Letter p.588

Of all complex human illnesses, major depressive disorder (MDD) has arguably proved the trickiest to understand. Despite decades of research, there is little certainty about its biological basis, in part because genetic clues to its aetiology have been hard to find1. The combination of relatively high prevalence and relatively low heritability seems to indicate that MDD does not lend itself to genetic analysis, although the genetic dissection of type 2 diabetes mellitus, which has a similar prevalence and heritability, has been much more productive. On page 588 of this issue, the CONVERGE consortium2 identifies the first two long-awaited genetic associations for MDD.

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References

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  1. Patrick F. Sullivan is in the Departments of Genetics and Psychiatry, and in the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-7264, USA, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.,

    Patrick F. Sullivan

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Correspondence to Patrick F. Sullivan.

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Sullivan, P. Associations with depression. Nature 523, 539–540 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14635

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