Behavior Genetics Association 45th Annual Meeting Abstracts

The first genetic variants associated with neuroticism were identified in a meta-analysis of genome-wide association (GWA) results based on 1000Genomes imputation in 63,661 participants from 29 discovery cohorts and 9786 participants from a replication cohort. Participants came from Europe, the United States or Australia (Van den Berg et al. Behav Genet 2014; de Moor et al. in press). Polygenic scores based on the meta-analysis of neuroticism in 27 cohorts (removing data from NTR and NESDA) significantly predicted neuroticism and MDD in NTR and NESDA. Here we extend the polygenic score prediction to other traits hypothesized to show genetic overlap with a higher neuroticism (anxiety, borderline personality disorder, migraine, smoking), with lower neuroticism (e.g. exercise) or to be independent of neuroticism (other NEO personality traits, alcohol use).