Genome-wide association study of suicide death and polygenic prediction of clinical antecedents

ObjectiveSuicide death is a highly preventable, yet growing, worldwide health crisis. To date, there has been a lack of adequately powered genomic studies of suicide, with no sizeable suicide death cohorts available for study. To address this limitation, we conducted the first comprehensive genomic analysis of suicide death, using a previously unpublished suicide cohort. MethodsThe analysis sample consisted of 3,413 population-ascertained cases of European ancestry and 14,810 ancestrally matched controls. Analytical methods included principle components analysis for ancestral matching and adjusting for population stratification, linear mixed model genome-wide association testing (conditional on genetic relatedness matrix), gene and gene set enrichment testing, polygenic score analyses, as well as SNP heritability and genetic correlation estimation using LD score regression. ResultsGWAS identified two genome-wide significant loci (6 SNPs, p<5x10-8). Gene-based analyses implicated 19 genes on chromosomes 13, 15, 16, 17, and 19 (q<0.05). Suicide heritability was estimated h2 =0.2463, SE = 0.0356 using summary statistics from a multivariate logistic GWAS adjusting for ancestry. Notably, suicide polygenic scores were robustly predictive of out of sample suicide death, as were polygenic scores for several other psychiatric disorders and psychological traits, particularly behavioral disinhibition and major depressive disorder. ConclusionsIn this report, we identify multiple genome-wide significant loci/genes, and demonstrate robust polygenic score prediction of suicide death case-control status, adjusting for ancestry, in independent training and test sets. Additionally, we report that suicide death cases have increased genetic risk for behavioral disinhibition, major depression, autism spectrum disorder, psychosis, and alcohol use disorder relative to controls. Results demonstrate the ability of polygenic scores to robustly, and multidimensionally, predict suicide death case-control status.