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Shared genetic risk in psychiatric disorders

Scientists have characterized the broad genetic patterns that are shared across 14 psychiatric disorders. Could it reframe how mental-health conditions are diagnosed?
By
  1. Abdel Abdellaoui

    1. Abdel Abdellaoui is in the Department of Psychiatry, Amsterdam University Medical Centre, University of Amsterdam, 1105 AZ Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Psychiatric disorders disrupt the core functions of the human mind, from perception and cognition to emotion and motivation. Decades of twin and family studies have shown that psychiatric disorders have a large heritable component1, but they are still among the least understood conditions in medicine. Writing in Nature, Grotzinger et al.2 report the analysis of genetic data from more than one million people, examining associations between genetic variants and 14 psychiatric disorders. They reveal that the genetic variation underpinning these conditions clusters into five broad categories, which cut across current diagnostic boundaries.

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Nature 649, 295-296 (2026)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-03728-8

References

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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