Editorial: Polygenic Risk Scores in Child Psychiatry, Research Promise, and Potential Clinical Pitfalls

Polygenic risk scores (PRSs) for mental disorders have become a major player in child psychiatry research. PRSs quantify a child's risk for childhood psychiatric disorders by summing the effects of a multitude of common risk genetic variants across the entire genome. Each genetic variant in isolation contributes a minuscule amount to the disorder, but their combined effect can be substantial. The study by Pat et al.¹ illustrates how PRSs can be used as a starting point to examine the mechanisms that might link common genetic variant risk with symptoms. In their exploration of how genes, cognition, and psychopathology may be tied together, the authors apply meticulous analytic techniques to a rich, open dataset (the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development [ABCD] cohort) and report fascinating results.