“Children Aren't Just Small Adults”: Non-Specific Mapping of Polygenic Risk Scores Onto Dimensional Psychopathology at Age 9-10 in the ABCD Study

Abstract

Genome wide association studies (GWAS) in psychiatry, and polygenic risk score (PRS) analyses, have focused primarily on disorders that emerge in adulthood and have enrolled adult participants. Effects of polygenic loading for these disorders on psychopathology in children remain largely unexplored. Dimensional measures of psychopathology in children may index risk for emergence of full-blown disorders later in life. As such, an understanding of how genetic loading for these disorders maps onto dimensional symptoms in children may have value for prognosis and early intervention. Leveraging baseline data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, we examined how indices of polygenic risk track with dimensional psychopathology at age 9-10.