Cited by 449Genetic Associations and EpidemiologySchizophrenia research and treatmentGenetic Mapping and Diversity in Plants and Animals

Contrasting genetic architectures of schizophrenia and other complex diseases using fast variance-components analysis

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Schizophrenia Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, Loh, Po-Ru, Bhatia, Gaurav, Gusev, Alexander, Finucane, Hilary K, Bulik-Sullivan, Brendan K, Pollack, Samuela J, de Candia, Teresa R +7 more·2015·Nature Genetics

Abstract

Heritability analyses of genome-wide association study (GWAS) cohorts have yielded important insights into complex disease architecture, and increasing sample sizes hold the promise of further discoveries. Here we analyze the genetic architectures of schizophrenia in 49,806 samples from the PGC and nine complex diseases in 54,734 samples from the GERA cohort. For schizophrenia, we infer an overwhelmingly polygenic disease architecture in which ≥71% of 1-Mb genomic regions harbor ≥1 variant influencing schizophrenia risk. We also observe significant enrichment of heritability in GC-rich regions and in higher-frequency SNPs for both schizophrenia and GERA diseases. In bivariate analyses, we observe significant genetic correlations (ranging from 0.18 to 0.85) for several pairs of GERA diseases; genetic correlations were on average 1.3 tunes stronger than the correlations of overall disease liabilities. To accomplish these analyses, we developed a fast algorithm for multicomponent, multi-trait variance-components analysis that overcomes prior computational barriers that made such analyses intractable at this scale.

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  • Common variants explain ~24% of the variance in disease liability.

    “As a class of variation, common variants explain ~24% of the variance in disease liability 11 .”
  • GWAS have identified 270 common risk loci for schizophrenia with individually small effect (median OR <1.05).

    “This has been borne out by genome-wide association studies (GWAS) which have now, in a companion paper, identified 270 common (minor allele frequency [MAF] > 1%) risk loci of individually small effect (median odds ratio [OR] < 1.05)13.”
  • Common and ultra-rare coding variants identify an overlapping set of genes.

    “In tandem with a companion paper from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium13, we provide evidence that common and ultra-rare coding variants identify an overlapping set of genes.”
  • The largest schizophrenia GWAS identified common variant associations at 270 distinct loci from 69,369 cases and 236,642 controls.

    “To evaluate the overlap of schizophrenia associations from common variants and ultra-rare coding variant analyses, we jointly analyzed our results with the largest GWAS of schizophrenia to date, which identified common variant associations at 270 distinct loci from the analysis of 69,369 cases and 236,642 controls13.”

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  1. [55]Finucane HK Partitioning heritability by functional category using GWAS summary statistics bioRxiv 2015 014241

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Authors
Schizophrenia Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, Loh, P.-R., Bhatia, G., Gusev, A., Finucane, H. K., Bulik-Sullivan, B. K., Pollack, S. J., de Candia, T. R., Lee, S. H., Wray, N. R., Kendler, K. S., O'Donovan, M. C., Neale, B. M., Patterson, N., & Price, A. L.
Affiliations
  • Broad Institute (US)
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
  • The University of Queensland (AU)
  • Virginia Commonwealth University (US)
Corresponding author
  • Loh, Po-Ru
  • Price, Alkes L
Venue
Nature Genetics
Published
2015-11-02
Volume
47
Issue
12
Pages
1385-1392
ISSN
  • 1061-4036 (ISSN-L)
  • 1546-1718
OpenAlex
W2168354474
Cited by
449
References
69
Citations by year
2026: 21 · 2025: 27 · 2024: 30 · 2023: 42 · 2022: 46 · 2021: 61 · 2020: 50 · 2019: 52 · 2018: 49 · 2017: 43 · 2016: 25 · 2015: 3
FWCI
27.33
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Nature Genetics (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Research Publications (Maastricht University) (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • EPubDev Repository (submittedVersion)
  • Adelaide Research & Scholarship (AR&S) (University of Adelaide) (submittedVersion)
  • Lancaster EPrints (Lancaster University) (submittedVersion)
  • ORCA Online Research @Cardiff (Cardiff University) (submittedVersion)
  • Institutional Research Information System (Università degli Studi di Trento) (submittedVersion)
  • Minerva Access (University of Melbourne) (submittedVersion)
  • Lirias (KU Leuven) (submittedVersion)
  • RUNE (Research UNE) (submittedVersion)
  • Research Publications (Maastricht University) (submittedVersion)
  • NOVA (University of Newcastle Australia) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (480- 05-003)
  • Lundbeckfonden (R155-2014-1724)
  • National Institutes of Health (1s10rr028832-01)
  • Medical Research Council (MR/L010305/1)
  • National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH085548, R01MH101244)
  • National Human Genome Research Institute (R01HG006399, F32HG007805)
  • National Center for Research Resources (S10 RR028832, 1S10RR028832-01)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetic Associations and Epidemiology
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Schizophrenia research and treatment
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetic Mapping and Diversity in Plants and Animals
Keywords
schizophrenia, genetic architecture, polygenic architecture, complex diseases, genetic correlation, heritability, variance component analysis, multi-trait analysis, GC-rich regions, single nucleotide polymorphisms, genetic risk variants
MeSH terms
Aging, Algorithms, Analysis of Variance, Humans, Phenotype, Risk Factors, Schizophrenia, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Multifactorial Inheritance, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Genome-Wide Association Study

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