Volker Arolt

Pleiotropic genetic architecture linking schizophrenia and substance use disorders

This study identifies shared genetic architecture between schizophrenia and substance use disorders using GWAS and genomic methods, finding significant genetic correlations and bidirectional causal relationships.

Gray matter correlates of childhood maltreatment: searching for replicability in a multi-cohort brain-wide association study

This study investigates the replicability of gray matter correlates of childhood maltreatment across three cohorts and finds no significant replication after controlling for depression.

Pathway-Specific Polygenic Scores for Predicting Clinical Lithium Treatment Response in Patients with Bipolar Disorder

The paper develops pathway-specific polygenic scores to predict lithium treatment response in bipolar disorder and finds associations with specific biological pathways.

Disease Severity Across Psychiatric Disorders Is Linked to Pro-Inflammatory Cytokines

This study identifies two clusters of severe mental disorder patients with differing illness severity, finding elevated pro-inflammatory serum proteins in the more severe group.

Mapping genomic loci prioritises genes and implicates synaptic biology in schizophrenia

A genome-wide association study of 69,369 schizophrenia cases and 236,642 controls identifies 270 risk loci, prioritizes 130 genes, and links common and rare risk variants to neuronal synaptic biology.

Interplay between the Genetics of Personality Traits, severe Psychiatric Disorders, and COVID-19 Host Genetics in the Susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 Infection

The paper investigates genetic correlations between psychiatric disorders, personality traits, and SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility using GWAS data and individual-level polygenic risk scores.

Variation of HbA1c affects cognition and white matter microstructure in healthy, young adults

This study finds that higher HbA1c levels are associated with worse cognitive performance and reduced white matter integrity in healthy young adults.

Genetic comorbidity between major depression and cardio-metabolic disease, stratified by age at onset of major depression.

This study investigates genetic associations between major depression and cardio-metabolic traits, finding shared genetic aetiology regardless of depression onset age.

Genome-wide meta-analysis of depression identifies 102 independent variants and highlights the importance of the prefrontal brain regions.

A meta-analysis of 807,553 people from 23andMe, UK Biobank and PGC finds 102 depression variants. 87 of them replicate in 1,306,354 individuals, and heritability is enriched in prefrontal brain regions.

Pharmacogenetics of antidepressant response: a polygenic approach

This study investigates whether polygenic risk scores (PRS) can predict antidepressant response in MDD, finding no significant predictive effect.