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

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • IMAGEN Consortium - (Author)
  • Azmeraw T. Amare - , South Australian Health And Medical Research Institute, University of Adelaide (Author)
  • Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy
  • Debre Berhan University
  • Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
  • University of Bonn
  • LVR University Hospital Essen
  • Neuroscience Research Australia
  • University of New South Wales
  • National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
  • University of California at San Diego
  • Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin
  • Dokkyo Medical University
  • University of Cagliari
  • University of Barcelona
  • Geneva University Hospitals
  • Karolinska Institutet
  • Université Paris Cité
  • Medical University of Graz
  • Mayo Clinic Rochester, MN
  • McGill University Health Centre
  • National Taiwan University
  • University of Basel
  • Jülich Research Centre
  • McGill University
  • University of Medical Sciences Poznan
  • Johns Hopkins University
  • Fondation FondaMental
  • Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry
  • Centre Hospitalier Charles Perrens
  • Dalhousie University
  • Alexandru Obregia Clinical Psychiatric Hospital
  • University Hospital Tübingen
  • University of Tübingen
  • University Hospital Frankfurt
  • University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden

Abstract

Background: Polygenic scores (PGSs) hold the potential to identify patients who respond favorably to specific psychiatric treatments. However, their biological interpretation remains unclear. In this study, we developed pathway-specific PGSs (PSPGSs) for lithium response and assessed their association with clinical lithium response in patients with bipolar disorder. Methods: Using sets of genes involved in pathways affected by lithium, we developed 9 PSPGSs and evaluated their associations with lithium response in the International Consortium on Lithium Genetics (ConLi+Gen) (N = 2367), with validation in combined PsyCourse (Pathomechanisms and Signatures in the Longitudinal Course of Psychosis) (N = 105) and BipoLife (N = 102) cohorts. The association between each PSPGS and lithium response—defined both as a continuous ALDA score and a categorical outcome (good vs. poor responses)—was evaluated using regression models, with adjustment for confounders. The cutoff for a significant association was p < .05 after multiple testing correction. Results: The PGSs for acetylcholine, GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), and mitochondria were associated with response to lithium in both categorical and continuous outcomes. However, the PGSs for calcium channel, circadian rhythm, and GSK (glycogen synthase kinase) were associated only with the continuous outcome. Each score explained 0.29% to 1.91% of the variance in the categorical and 0.30% to 1.54% of the variance in the continuous outcomes. A multivariate model combining PSPGSs that showed significant associations in the univariate analysis (combined PSPGS) increased the percentage of variance explained (R2) to 3.71% and 3.18% for the categorical and continuous outcomes, respectively. Associations for PGSs for GABA and circadian rhythm were replicated. Patients with the highest genetic loading (10th decile) for acetylcholine variants were 3.03 times more likely (95% CI, 1.95 to 4.69) to show a good lithium response (categorical outcome) than patients with the lowest genetic loading (1st decile). Conclusions: PSPGSs achieved predictive performance comparable to the conventional genome-wide PGSs, with the added advantage of biological interpretability using a smaller list of genetic variants.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number100558
JournalBiological Psychiatry Global Open Science
Volume5
Issue number5
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2025
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0002-3415-5583/work/203813739
ORCID /0000-0002-2666-859X/work/203814155

Keywords

Sustainable Development Goals

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Keywords

  • Bipolar disorder, Lithium, Pharmacogenomics, Polygenic score, Psychiatry