Progress In Psychiatric Genetics In China

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Overall Abstract The purpose of this symposium is to highlight recent progress in psychiatric genetics in Chinese samples, complementing findings largely from Caucasian samples. We will stress commonalities and differences between existing studies and Chinese studies. Weihua Yue from Peking University reports on a multi-site GWAS of schizophrenia with >10,000 samples. 13 SNPs were selected for replication in another 10,000 samples. 4 SNPs in 3 regions out of 13 survived after confirmation in the replication sample, 9/13 SNPs were in the same direction, and 7/13 SNPs were both p Yin Yao from NIMH integrated functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and brain-gene ResNet (BGR) data to identify functional pathways associated with SCZ phenotypes. Automated Anatomical Labeling based brain connectivity analysis on fMRI data and Gene Set and Subnetwork Enrichment Analyses identified 4 SCZ candidate brain regions (P Gang Chen from Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine will report on a GWAS of alcohol dependence symptom count (ADSC) in sample of 3838 European and African Americans from the “Study of Addiction: Genetics and Environment”. Using a mixed linear approach, 20 SNPs showed significant (permutation testing) association with ADSC after accounting for ethnicity, co-morbidities, and including additive as well as dominance and epistasis in the model. Association with the previously known ADH1C gene was confirmed, as well as several other known and new genes. The detected SNPs explain ~20% of the variance, half of which is accounted for by dominance and epistatic interactions, suggesting such networks are important in the genetic architecture of alcoholism. Margit Burmeister will report on implementing in China Srijan Sen’s “medical intern health study”. Medical graduates are recruited after matching in now 55 hospitals in the US. Baseline surveys include personality, stress level, other psychological tests and the PHQ9 depression score. Depression increases from ~4% of incoming Medical graduates to ~ 26% during internship. Perceived stress, work hour and medical errors are associated with increased PHQ9 scores. Most residents do not seek care for their depression symptoms, out of fear of reprisal. In China, a formal residency program has recently been introduced in several cities. Interviews with residents documented similar concerns as in the US. Our pilot data (N=75, ~75% participation) in 2015 in Peking Union Medical College demonstrate a similar increase of depression scores from ~4% to ~ 22%, suggesting that work-stress induced depression may be modeled similarly in China as in the US, where a GWAS of the first ~7500 interns will soon become available.