Unique genetic and risk-factor profiles in clusters of major depressive disorder-related multimorbidity trajectories, 2024, Gezsi et al

Abstract

The heterogeneity and complexity of symptom presentation, comorbidities and genetic factors pose challenges to the identification of biological mechanisms underlying complex diseases. Current approaches used to identify biological subtypes of major depressive disorder (MDD) mainly focus on clinical characteristics that cannot be linked to specific biological models. Here, we examined multimorbidities to identify MDD subtypes with distinct genetic and non-genetic factors.

We leveraged dynamic Bayesian network approaches to determine a minimal set of multimorbidities relevant to MDD and identified seven clusters of disease-burden trajectories throughout the lifespan among 1.2 million participants from cohorts in the UK, Finland, and Spain. The clusters had clear protective- and risk-factor profiles as well as age-specific clinical courses mainly driven by inflammatory processes, and a comprehensive map of heritability and genetic correlations among these clusters was revealed. Our results can guide the development of personalized treatments for MDD based on the unique genetic, clinical and non-genetic risk-factor profiles of patients.

Open access: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-51467-7#Sec2

 

I'm mostly sharing this because there have been a couple of articles about this study here in Hungary in the media in the last couple of days. And there was one article on a health website that said that the health conditions with the strongest association with depression are CFS, fibro, IBS, weight gain, migraine etc etc.

Yet, when I checked the study, I found no mention of CFS at all (or fibro for that matter). I found no such list in the press release of the university either. I think the author of the article just included a list he/she believed to be right. However, the way it is written, it absolutely sounds like this was the main finding of the study. Jeez. Awful journalism, just awful. And that is on a healthcare website.