Genomic Dissection of Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia, Including 28 Subphenotypes

Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are two distinct diagnoses that share symptomology. Understanding the genetic factors contributing to the shared and disorder-specific symptoms will be crucial for improving diagnosis and treatment. In genetic data consisting of 53,555 cases (20,129 bipolar disorder [BD], 33,426 schizophrenia [SCZ]) and 54,065 controls, we identified 114 genome-wide significant loci implicating synaptic and neuronal pathways shared between disorders. Comparing SCZ to BD (23,585 SCZ, 15,270 BD) identified four genomic regions including one with disorder-independent causal variants and potassium ion response genes as contributing to differences in biology between the disorders. Polygenic risk score (PRS) analyses identified several significant correlations within case-only phenotypes including SCZ PRS with psychotic features and age of onset in BD. For the first time, we discover specific loci that distinguish between BD and SCZ and identify polygenic components underlying multiple symptom dimensions. These results point to the utility of genetics to inform symptomology and potential treatment. Genetic analysis of multiple bipolar disorder and schizophrenia cohorts reveals loci and polygenic risk scores that differentiate the clinical symptoms of these two highly correlated disorders

Bipolar multiplex families have an increased burden of common risk variants for psychiatric disorders

Multiplex families with a high prevalence of a psychiatric disorder are often examined to identify rare genetic variants with large effect sizes. In the present study, we analysed whether the risk for bipolar disorder (BD) in BD multiplex families is influenced by common genetic variants. Furthermore, we investigated whether this risk is conferred mainly by BD-specific risk variants or by variants also associated with the susceptibility to schizophrenia or major depression. In total, 395 individuals from 33 Andalusian BD multiplex families (166 BD, 78 major depressive disorder, 151 unaffected) as well as 438 subjects from an independent, BD case/control cohort (161 unrelated BD, 277 unrelated controls) were analysed. Polygenic risk scores (PRS) for BD, schizophrenia (SCZ), and major depression were calculated and compared between the cohorts. Both the familial BD cases and unaffected family members had higher PRS for all three psychiatric disorders than the independent controls, with BD and SCZ being significant after correction for multiple testing, suggesting a high baseline risk for several psychiatric disorders in the families. Moreover, familial BD cases showed significantly higher BD PRS than unaffected family members and unrelated BD cases. A plausible hypothesis is that, in multiplex families with a general increase in risk for psychiatric disease, BD development is attributable to a high burden of common variants that confer a specific risk for BD. The present analyses demonstrated that common genetic risk variants for psychiatric disorders are likely to contribute to the high incidence of affective psychiatric disorders in the multiplex families. However, the PRS explained only part of the observed phenotypic variance, and rare variants might have also contributed to disease development.</p

Letter of Intent for the LHCb Upgrade

The primary goal of LHCb is to measure the effects of new particles or forces beyond the Standard Model. Results obtained from data collected in 2010 show that the detector is robust and functioning well. While LHCb will be able to measure a host of interesting channels in heavy flavour decays in the upcoming few years, a limit of about 1 fb^ 121 of data per year cannot be overcome without upgrading the detector. The LHC machine does not face such a limitation. With the upgraded detector, read out at 40MHz, a much more flexible software-based triggering strategy will allow a large increase not only in data rate, as the detector would collect 5 fb^ 121 per year, but also the ability to increase trigger efficiencies especially in decays to hadronic final states. In addition, it will be possible to change triggers to explore different physics as LHC discoveries point us to the most interesting channels. Our physics scope extends beyond that of flavour. Possibilities for interesting discoveries exist over a whole variety of phenomena including searches for Majorana neutrinos, exotic Higgs decays and precision electroweak measurements. Here we describe the physics motivations and proposed detector changes for exploring new phenomena in proton-proton collisions near 14 TeV centre-of-mass energy