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Background: Depression and anxiety are the most common mental health problems in young people. Currently, clinicians are advised to wait before initiating treatment for young people with these disorders as many spontaneously remit. However, others develop recurrent disorder but this subgroup cannot be identified at the outset. We examined whether psychiatric polygenic scores (PGS) could help inform stratification efforts to predict those at higher risk of recurrence. Methods: Probable emotional disorder was examined in two UK population cohorts using the emotional symptoms subscale of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Those with emotional disorder at two or more time points between ages 5 and 25 years were classed as 'recurrent emotional disorder' (n = 1,643) and those with emotional disorder at one time point as having 'single episode emotional disorder' (n = 1,435, controls n = 8,715). We first examined the relationship between psychiatric PGS and emotional disorders in childhood and adolescence. Second, we tested whether psychiatric PGS added to predictor variables of known association with emotional disorder (neurodevelopmental comorbidity, special educational needs, family history of depression and socioeconomic status) when discriminating between single‐episode and recurrent emotional disorder. Analyses were conducted separately in individuals of European and South Asian ancestry. Results: Probable emotional disorder was associated with higher PGS for major depressive disorder (MDD), anxiety, broad depression, ADHD and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in those of European ancestry. Higher MDD and broad depression PGS were associated with emotional disorder in people of South Asian ancestry. Recurrent, compared to single‐episode, emotional disorder was associated with ASD and parental psychiatric history. PGS were not associated with episode recurrence, and PGS did not improve discrimination of recurrence when combined with clinical predictors. Conclusions: Our findings do not support the use of PGS as a tool to assess the likelihood of recurrence in young people experiencing their first episode of emotional disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Around 30% of individuals with schizophrenia remain symptomatic and significantly impaired despite antipsychotic treatment and are considered to be treatment resistant. Clinicians are currently unable to predict which patients are at higher risk of treatment resistance.Aims: To determine whether genetic liability for schizophrenia and/or clinical characteristics measurable at illness onset can prospectively indicate a higher risk of treatment-resistant psychosis (TRP).Method: In 1070 individuals with schizophrenia or related psychotic disorders, schizophrenia polygenic risk scores (PRS) and large copy number variations (CNVs) were assessed for enrichment in TRP. Regression and machine-learning approaches were used to investigate the association of phenotypes related to demographics, family history, premorbid factors and illness onset with TRP.Results: Younger age at onset (odds ratio 0.94, P = 7.79 × 10-13) and poor premorbid social adjustment (odds ratio 1.64, P = 2.41 × 10-4) increased risk of TRP in univariate regression analyses. These factors remained associated in multivariate regression analyses, which also found lower premorbid IQ (odds ratio 0.98, P = 7.76 × 10-3), younger father's age at birth (odds ratio 0.97, P = 0.015) and cannabis use (odds ratio 1.60, P = 0.025) increased the risk of TRP. Machine-learning approaches found age at onset to be the most important predictor and also identified premorbid IQ and poor social adjustment as predictors of TRP, mirroring findings from regression analyses. Genetic liability for schizophrenia was not associated with TRP.Conclusions: People with an earlier age at onset of psychosis and poor premorbid functioning are more likely to be treatment resistant. The genetic architecture of susceptibility to schizophrenia may be distinct from that of treatment outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Twin studies suggest that genetic factors contribute to continuity in mental health problems and that environmental factors are the major contributor to developmental change. The authors investigated the influence of psychiatric risk alleles on early-onset mental health trajectories and whether the trajectories were subsequently modified by exposure to childhood victimization.Methods: The sample was a prospective U.K. population-based cohort, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. The developmental trajectories of emotional problems were estimated in childhood (approximately ages 4-8 years) and adolescence (approximately ages 12-17 years). Psychiatric risk alleles were indexed by polygenic risk scores (PRS) for schizophrenia using genome-wide association study results from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. Chronic peer victimization in late childhood (ages 8.5 and 10.5 years) was assessed as an index of environmental exposure. Individuals with sufficient data on emotional problems, the PRS, and victimization were included in the main analyses (N=3,988).Results: Higher schizophrenia PRSs were associated with a trajectory of early-onset increasing emotional problems (odds ratio=1.18, 95% CI=1.02-1.36) compared with a trajectory of low-stable emotional problems. Subsequent exposure to victimization increased the likelihood of transitioning from a trajectory of low-stable emotional problems during childhood (before exposure) to an increasing trajectory in adolescence (after exposure) (odds ratio=2.59, 95% CI=1.48-4.53).Conclusions: While the early development of emotional problems was associated with genetic risk (schizophrenia risk alleles), the subsequent course of emotional problems for those who might otherwise have remained on a more favorable trajectory was altered by exposure to peer victimization, which is a potentially modifiable environmental exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Adult ADHD has been assumed to be a continuation of childhood‐onset ADHD. However, recent studies have identified individuals with ADHD in adulthood who have not had ADHD in childhood. Whether or not these individuals have a ‘typical’ neurodevelopmental profile is not clear. Methods: We tested two explanations for the emergence of apparent late‐onset ADHD symptomatology using the ALSPAC epidemiological cohort, by grouping individuals according to their scores on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) hyperactivity subscale at ages 12 and 17 years. First, we tested whether some of those with apparent late‐onset ADHD symptoms had been potentially misclassified on the basis of earlier SDQ hyperactivity scores (ages 7, 8 and 9 years) or of subthreshold symptoms at age 12 years. Second, we investigated the possibility that those with ‘genuine’ late‐onset ADHD symptoms had a delayed manifestation of the same liability that underlies childhood‐onset symptoms, by investigating whether they had a similar profile of neurodevelopmental impairments (in the domains of autistic symptomatology, language, reading, spelling, executive functioning and IQ) as those with typical childhood‐onset ADHD. Results: N = 56/75 (75%) of those with apparent late‐onset ADHD had had high ADHD scores at least one point in childhood, suggesting that they may have been misclassified on the basis of their score at age 12 years. The remaining 19 individuals (25%) with genuine late‐onset ADHD symptoms did not show a profile of neurodevelopmental impairment typically seen in ADHD, instead showing similar levels of autistic symptoms, language skills, executive functioning ability and IQ to those without ADHD symptoms. The only exceptions were that this group showed reading and spelling problems at age 9 years. Conclusions: Our work suggests that this small number of individuals with genuine late‐onset symptoms may not be most appropriately considered as having a typical neurodevelopmental disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The MAPT H1c haplotype is a risk factor for the neurodegenerative tauopathies progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and Alzheimer''s disease. We hypothesise that the effect of the H1c haplotype relates to an increase in MAPT expression leading to an increase in tau neurofibrillary tangle deposition. We have evaluated the effect of the MAPT H1c haplotype on the expression of MAPT using allele specific expression, comparing the relative levels of MAPT H1 and H2 RNA derived from post-mortem human brain, unaffected by neurodegenerative disease. Using three assays spanning the MAPT gene we did not detect any effect of H1c on MAPT expression as compared with other haplotypes. We did, however, detect an effect of age on expression of MAPT H1 with a relative decrease in MAPT H1 expression with increased age. Our data suggest that there is an interaction between age and the expression of MAPT. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]