Pathway-Specific Polygenic Scores for Predicting Clinical Lithium Treatment Response in Patients With Bipolar Disorder
Research output: Contribution to journal › Research article › Contributed › peer-review
Contributors
- 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
- 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
- McGill University
- University of Medical Sciences Poznan
- Johns Hopkins University
- Fondation FondaMental
- 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 language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 100558 |
| Journal | Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| Publication status | Published - Sept 2025 |
| Peer-reviewed | Yes |
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