Abstract 16105: Depression Modulates Polygenic Risk of Cardiovascular and Cardiometabolic Disease

Abstract

Introduction: Depression is associated with an increased risk of coronary artery disease (CAD). Whether depression modifies genetic risk of cardiovascular and cardiometabolic disease is unknown. Methods: We included genotyped, unrelated European ancestry individuals in the UK Biobank. Using genome-wide significant single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from studies external to the UK Biobank, we generated polygenic risk scores (PRS) for coronary artery disease (CAD, 74 SNPs), hypertension (75 SNPs), type 2 diabetes (T2D, 64 SNPs), atrial fibrillation (25 SNPs), and ischemic stroke (11 SNPs). Participants were stratified by PRS for each condition as low (quintile 1), intermediate (quintiles 2-4), and high (quintile 5) genetic risk. Cox models tested the association of depression frequency with each incident condition among individuals with high PRS, with adjustment for age, sex, the first 20 principal components, genotyping array, and Townsend deprivation index. Additional models further adjusted for health behaviors (exercise, tobacco and alcohol use, vegetable and fresh fruit intake) and tested associations across the PRS spectrum. Results: Among 348,083 individuals, 78,664 (22.6%) reported depression in the past 2 weeks, including 14,776 (4.2%) with depression more than half of days. Depression burden modified the risk of incident CAD across the spectrum of CAD polygenic risk (Figure 1A). Among individuals with high PRS, lack of depression was associated with lower risk of incident CAD (HR 0.70, 95% 0.58-0.86), hypertension (HR 0.58, 95% CI 0.50-0.67), T2D (HR 0.48, 95% CI 0.41-0.55), and atrial fibrillation (HR 0.74, 95% CI 0.62-0.89) compared to those with a high burden of depression. These risk reductions were minimally attenuated after further adjustment for health behaviors (Figure 1B). Conclusions: Lower burden of depression was associated was decreased risks of cardiovascular disease among individuals at high genetic cardiovascular risk.