A genome-wide association study of total child psychiatric problems scores.
Creators: name: Neumann, Alexander
name: Nolte, Ilja M
name: Pappa, Irene
name: Ahluwalia, Tarunveer S
name: Pettersson, Erik
name: Rodriguez, Alina
name: Whitehouse, Andrew
name: Van Beijsterveldt, Catharina EM
name: Benyamin, Beben
name: Hammerschlag, Anke R
name: Helmer, Quinta
name: Karhunen, Ville
name: Krapohl, Eva
name: Lu, Yi
name: Van Der Most, Peter J
name: Palviainen, Teemu
name: St Pourcain, Beate
name: Seppälä, Ilkka
name: Suarez, Anna
name: Vilor-Tejedor, Natalia
name: Tiesler, Carla MT
name: Wang, Carol
name: Wills, Amanda
name: Zhou, Ang
name: Alemany, Silvia
name: Bisgaard, Hans
name: Bønnelykke, Klaus
name: Davies, Gareth E
name: Hakulinen, Christian
name: Henders, Anjali K
name: Hyppönen, Elina
name: Stokholm, Jakob
name: Bartels, Meike
name: Hottenga, Jouke-Jan
name: Heinrich, Joachim
name: Hewitt, John
name: Keltikangas-Järvinen, Liisa
name: Korhonen, Tellervo
name: Kaprio, Jaakko
name: Lahti, Jari
name: Lahti-Pulkkinen, Marius
name: Lehtimäki, Terho
name: Middeldorp, Christel M
name: Najman, Jackob M
name: Pennell, Craig
name: Power, Chris
name: Oldehinkel, Albertine J
name: Plomin, Robert
name: Räikkönen, Katri
name: Raitakari, Olli T
name: Rimfeld, Kaili
name: Sass, Lærke
name: Snieder, Harold
name: Standl, Marie
name: Sunyer, Jordi
name: Williams, Gail M
name: Bakermans-Kranenburg, Marian J
name: Boomsma, Dorret I
name: Van IJzendoorn, Marinus H
name: Hartman, Catharina A
name: Tiemeier, Henning
Publisher: name: Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Research Article
subject: Biology and life sciences
subject: Medicine and health sciences
subject: Research and analysis methods
subject: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Substantial genetic correlations have been reported across psychiatric disorders and numerous cross-disorder genetic variants have been detected. To identify the genetic variants underlying general psychopathology in childhood, we performed a genome-wide association study using a total psychiatric problem score. We analyzed 6,844,199 common SNPs in 38,418 school-aged children from 20 population-based cohorts participating in the EAGLE consortium. The SNP heritability of total psychiatric problems was 5.4% (SE = 0.01) and two loci reached genome-wide significance: rs10767094 and rs202005905. We also observed an association of SBF2, a gene associated with neuroticism in previous GWAS, with total psychiatric problems. The genetic effects underlying the total score were shared with common psychiatric disorders only (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, depression, insomnia) (rG &gt; 0.49), but not with autism or the less common adult disorders (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or eating disorders) (rG &lt; 0.01). Importantly, the total psychiatric problem score also showed at least a moderate genetic correlation with intelligence, educational attainment, wellbeing, smoking, and body fat (rG &gt; 0.29). The results suggest that many common genetic variants are associated with childhood psychiatric symptoms and related phenotypes in general instead of with specific symptoms. Further research is needed to establish causality and pleiotropic mechanisms between related traits.