A Larger Look at the Genetics of Bipolar Disorder

By combining the findings of three separate association studies, researchers identify two strong associations.

In two recent, large, genome-wide studies designed to find associations with bipolar disorder, loci did not overlap, but the researchers did identify a strong signal for the CACNA1C locus. To expand on this finding, these researchers examined a third study population with similar genotyping methodology and combined the three sets of results.

Overall, genotyping was performed on 325,690 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 4387 patients with bipolar disorder and 6209 controls. By imputing polymorphic loci from SNPs from HapMap (the international project to map haplotypes of the human genome), the researchers examined a total of 1.8 million variants. Regression analyses controlled for population stratification due to differences in study …

Reviewing Author

Barbara Geller, MD

Disclosures

Nothing to disclose

Barbara Geller, MD

Disclosures

Nothing to disclose