Eduard Vieta and Josep Antoni Ramos-Quiroga.

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The largest conducted study to date on bipolar disorder inheritability has enabled researchers to identify 33 new genetic variants related to this mental disorder, which is a turning point to step forward in the discovery of therapeutical targets and drugs to treat it.

The study, published in the journal Nature Genetics, has been co-led by Eduard Vieta, professor at the Department of Medicine and member of the Institute of Neurosciences of the UB and Hospital Clínic-IDIBAPS, and Josep Antoni Ramos-Quiroga, from the Department of Psychiatry at the Vall d’Hebron Barcelona University Campus and the Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR). Both researchers are also members of the Mental Health Networking Biomedical Research Centre (CIBERSAM). This international collaborative research study has been carried out within the framework of the team working on bipolar disorder in the Psychiatrics Genomics Consortium.

Bipolar disorder is a complex mental disorder that features the pathological shifts of depressive episodes and episodes of an opposite mood, known as mania and hypomania. Between 40 and 50 people worldwide are estimated to suffer from this disorder. In the study, experts analysed more than 7.5 million common variants of the DNA sequencing of almost 415,000 people. Out of these, more than 40,000 suffered from bipolar disorder. Researchers also detected genetic loci (places where genes are located), which were previously associated with other psychiatric pathologies.

According to Eduard Vieta, this is “the most comprehensive genetic study ever on the inheritability of bipolar disorder, and its results shed light on a better understanding of how the disorder is transmitted, and to develop new treatments”.

Article reference:

N.Mullins et al. «Genome-wide association study of more than 40,000 bipolar disorder cases provides new insights into the underlying biology». Nature Genetics,May 2021. DOI: 10.1038/s41588-021-00857-4