Citation

Lopes FL, McMahon FJ. Am. J. Psychiatry 2019; 176(8): 600-602.

Affiliation

The Intramural Research Program, NIMH, Bethesda, Md.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, American Psychiatric Association)

DOI

10.1176/appi.ajp.2019.19060613

PMID

31366231

Abstract

Rising rates of suicide constitute a major threat to public health worldwide. The latest national epidemiological survey of U.S. adults showed a recent overall increase in suicide attempts among those with less formal education and those with depressive and anxiety disorders, among other groups (1). In addition to imposing an enormous emotional burden on families and communities, suicide attempts carry a high risk of mortality (2) and often lead to high costs, both direct and indirect (3). Faced with this increasing burden of suicidal behavior, researchers have redoubled their efforts to elucidate risk factors and preventive strategies for suicide.

Genetic contributions to suicidal behavior have long been suspected on the basis of family, twin, and adoption studies (reviewed in reference 4). However, genome-wide association studies (GWASs), which have successfully detected numerous genetic markers for a variety of psychiatric and other common illnesses, have until now failed to find statistically significant markers for suicide. In this issue of the Journal, Mullins et al. (5) report the results of a large-scale GWAS of suicidal behavior—the largest to date—based on several samples contributed to the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. The researchers compared genetic marker data obtained from people diagnosed with major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia who reported suicide attempts to data from people with the same diagnoses who denied any history of suicidal behavior. This design controls for the fact that almost everyone who engages in suicidal behavior suffers from a mental illness. A meta-analysis was then conducted across all three diagnostic groups, enhancing the opportunities to detect cross-diagnostic markers of suicidal behavior. Finally, the authors used the polygenic risk score (PRS) approach to investigate whether genetic liability to depression, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia per se was associated with risk of suicide attempts...

Language: en

Keywords

Genetics; Genome-Wide Association Study; Polygenic Risk Scoring; Suicide