Asthma and affective traits in adults: a genetically informative study

Area of Science:

• Genetics
• Psychiatry
• Respiratory Medicine

Background:

• Asthma frequently co-occurs with depression, anxiety, and high neuroticism.
• The causal relationship between these conditions is unclear, but shared genetic factors are suspected.
• Investigating common genetic susceptibility is crucial for understanding this comorbidity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine if a shared genetic susceptibility exists between asthma and affective traits (depression, anxiety, neuroticism).
• To explore genetic correlations and predict asthma risk using genetic data for affective traits.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a Swedish Twin Registry cohort (n=23,693 for health assessments, n=15,908 for genotyping).
• Performed questionnaire-based analyses for asthma and affective trait associations.
• Employed polygenic risk scores (PRS) and linkage-disequilibrium score regression (LDSC) for genetic analyses.

Main Results:

• Confirmed associations between self-reported asthma and affective traits.
• Found that genetic susceptibility for neuroticism showed a dose-response effect on asthma risk (highest PRS quartile: OR 1.37).
• Identified a significant genetic correlation between depression and asthma (r_g=0.17) but not for anxiety or neuroticism.

Conclusions:

• Shared genetic influences likely contribute to the comorbidity of asthma and depression.
• Genetic susceptibility for neuroticism is associated with asthma risk.
• Genetic factors do not appear to explain the comorbidity between asthma and anxiety.