EXPLORATORY ANALYSIS OF POLYGENIC RISK SCORES FOR PSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS: APPLIED TO DUAL DIAGNOSIS

Concurrence of substance use disorders (SUDs) is high in individuals with psychiatric illnesses; more importantly, individuals with both disorders (dual diagnosis) have more severe symptoms. Psychiatric disorders have been proposed to share a genetic susceptibility with SUDs. To explore this shared genetic susceptibility, we analyzed whether any of the polygenic risk scores (PRSs) for psychiatric disorders could be associated to dual diagnosis in patients with schizophrenia (SCZ) or bipolar disorder (BD).

We included 192 individuals of Mexican ancestry: 72 with SCZ, 53 with BD, and 67 unrelated controls without psychiatric disorders. We derived calculations of PRS for autism spectrum disorders, attention-deficit/hyperactive disorder, BD, major depression, and SCZ using summary genome-wide association statistics previously published.

We found that dual diagnosis had a shared genetic susceptibility with major depressive disorder (MDD) and SCZ; furthermore, in individuals with BD, dual diagnosis could be predicted by PRS for MDD.

Our results reinforce the notion that individuals with dual diagnosis have a higher genetic susceptibility to develop both disorders. However, analyses of larger sample sizes are required to further clarify how to predict risks through PRS within different populations.