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Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology
Published in: Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 10/2014

01-10-2014 | Commentary

Gene-environment interaction research in psychiatric epidemiology: a framework and implications for study design

Authors: Daniel W. Belsky, Nis Palm Suppli, Salomon Israel

Published in: Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology | Issue 10/2014

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Excerpt

The genetic epidemiology of psychiatric disorders is undergoing a sea change. The flood of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) enabled by the advent of low-cost, high throughput genotyping and the emergence of global consortia to harness the combined power of genome wide data on tens of thousands of individuals is now producing a large volume of discoveries. With these discoveries, hypothesis-free methods of uncovering the genetic roots of psychiatric disorder are overtaking traditional hypothesis-driven approaches. What this transition means for research on gene-environment interactions (GxE) is hotly debated [1‐5]. Uher’s review [6] addresses some of the contours of this debate. Here we seek to contextualize and expand on his points. Our goal is to make some sense of the ongoing conflict in psychiatric genetics between hypothesis-driven genetic research focused on candidate systems and hypothesis-free genetic research focused on data mining of the genome. We think part of the reason that arguments over how to conduct GxE research have grown so acrimonious is a lack of clarity over how genetic measurements are being used in GxE studies. In the paragraphs that follow, we frame the debate over how to conduct GxE research in terms of the substantive questions being asked and discuss implications of this framing for the conduct of GxE research within psychiatric epidemiology. …
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Metadata
Title
Gene-environment interaction research in psychiatric epidemiology: a framework and implications for study design
Authors
Daniel W. Belsky
Nis Palm Suppli
Salomon Israel
Publication date
01-10-2014
Publisher
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in
Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology / Issue 10/2014
Print ISSN: 0933-7954
Electronic ISSN: 1433-9285
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-014-0954-5

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