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Updated: Aug 12, 2025

Mapping Alzheimer's Disease Variants to Their Target Genes Using Computational Analysis of Chromatin Configuration
Published on: January 9, 2020
Genome-wide analyses of ADHD identify 27 risk loci, refine the genetic architecture and implicate several cognitive
Ditte Demontis1,2,3, G Bragi Walters4,5, Georgios Athanasiadis6,7,8
1Department of Biomedicine - Human Genetics, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark. ditte@biomed.au.dk.
Abstract:
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a prevalent neurodevelopmental disorder with a major genetic component. Here, we present a genome-wide association study meta-analysis of ADHD comprising 38,691 individuals with ADHD and 186,843 controls. We identified 27 genome-wide significant loci, highlighting 76 potential risk genes enriched among genes expressed particularly in early brain development. Overall, ADHD genetic risk was associated with several brain-specific neuronal subtypes and midbrain dopaminergic neurons. In exome-sequencing data from 17,896 individuals, we identified an increased load of rare protein-truncating variants in ADHD for a set of risk genes enriched with probable causal common variants, potentially implicating SORCS3 in ADHD by both common and rare variants. Bivariate Gaussian mixture modeling estimated that 84-98% of ADHD-influencing variants are shared with other psychiatric disorders. In addition, common-variant ADHD risk was associated with impaired complex cognition such as verbal reasoning and a range of executive functions, including attention.
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