Associations between schizophrenia polygenic risk and apathy in schizophrenia spectrum disorders and healthy controls

firemonkey · February 25, 2020, 11:50am

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Associations between schizophrenia polygenic risk and apathy in schizophrenia spectrum disorders and healthy controls.

SH Lyngstad, F Bettella, SR Aminoff, L Athanasiu, OA Andreassen, A Faerden and I Melle, Acta psychiatrica Scandinavica, Feb 24 2020

Apathy is a central predictor of a poor functional outcome in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia polygenic risk scores (PRS) are used to detect genetic associations to key clinical phenotypes in schizophrenia. We explored the associations between schizophrenia PRS and apathy levels in schizophrenia spectrum disorders (n = 281) and matched healthy controls (n = 298), and further how schizophrenia PRS contributed to predicting apathy when added to premorbid and clinical factors in the patient sample.Schizophrenia PRS were computed for each participant. Apathy was assessed with the Apathy Evaluation Scale. Bivariate correlation analyses were used to investigate associations between schizophrenia PRS and apathy, and between apathy, premorbid and clinical factors. Multiple hierarchical regression analyses were employed to evaluate the contributions of clinical variables and schizophrenia PRS to apathy levels.We found no significant associations between schizophrenia PRS and apathy in patients and healthy controls. Several premorbid and clinical characteristics significantly predicted apathy in patients, but schizophrenia PRS did not.Since the PRS are based on common genetic variants, our results do not preclude associations to other types of genetic factors. The results could also indicate that environmentally based biological or psychological factors contribute to apathy levels in schizophrenia.

anon10648258 · February 25, 2020, 3:46pm

This is an excellent study.
I didn’t have WGS done- WGS (whole genome sequencing) provides all pathogenic/VOUS/benign variants, but WGS tends to be expensive. WGS can provide these polygenic risk scores by identifying variants associated with neurodevelopmental and psychotic disorders, but the cost on the market is high. And OMIM does not identify a gene clearly associated with schizophrenia.

So…I don’t know. More needs to be done.

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Associations between schizophrenia polygenic risk and apathy in schizophrenia spectrum disorders and healthy controls

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