TY - JOUR
T1 - Generalised Anxiety Disorder – A Twin Study of Genetic Architecture, Genome-Wide Association and Differential Gene Expression
AU - Davies, M.N.
AU - Verdi, S.
AU - Burri, A.
AU - Trzaskowski, M.
AU - Lee, M.Y.
AU - Hettema, J.M.
AU - Jansen, R.
AU - Boomsma, D.I.
AU - Spector, T.D.
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is a common anxiety-related diagnosis, affecting approximately 5% of the adult population. One characteristic of GAD is a high degree of anxiety sensitivity (AS), a personality trait which describes the fear of arousal-related sensations. Here we present a genome-wide association study of AS using a cohort of 730 MZ and DZ female twins. The GWAS showed a significant association for a variant within the RBFOX1 gene. A heritability analysis of the same cohort also confirmed a significant genetic component with h2 of 0.42. Additionally, a subset of the cohort (25 MZ twins discordant for AS) was studied for evidence of differential expression using RNA-seq data. Significant differential expression of two exons with the ITM2B gene within the discordant MZ subset was observed, a finding that was replicated in an independent cohort. While previous research has shown that anxiety has a high comorbidity with a variety of psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders, our analysis suggests a novel etiology specific to AS. Copyright:
AB - Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is a common anxiety-related diagnosis, affecting approximately 5% of the adult population. One characteristic of GAD is a high degree of anxiety sensitivity (AS), a personality trait which describes the fear of arousal-related sensations. Here we present a genome-wide association study of AS using a cohort of 730 MZ and DZ female twins. The GWAS showed a significant association for a variant within the RBFOX1 gene. A heritability analysis of the same cohort also confirmed a significant genetic component with h2 of 0.42. Additionally, a subset of the cohort (25 MZ twins discordant for AS) was studied for evidence of differential expression using RNA-seq data. Significant differential expression of two exons with the ITM2B gene within the discordant MZ subset was observed, a finding that was replicated in an independent cohort. While previous research has shown that anxiety has a high comorbidity with a variety of psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders, our analysis suggests a novel etiology specific to AS. Copyright:
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/84943151093
UR - https://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84943151093&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0134865
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0134865
M3 - Article
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 10
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 8
M1 - e0134865
ER -