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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

Suicide and Genetics

Suicide and genetics

Suicide attempt is a polygenic trait, and 106 novel loci have been identified by leveraging the genetic architecture shared with other psychiatric disorders; the associated genes showed enrichment in synaptic signaling and inflammation.

Suicide and nonfatal suicidal behavior are major public health concerns, with causes involving both genetic and environmental factors; genetics alone therefore offers a limited approach to understanding their etiology. Although human studies indicate a heritability of 30% to 50% for suicidal behavior, the gene variants identified to date explain less than ten percent of the risk, highlighting the need to investigate variants associated with both psychiatric disorders and suicidal behavior. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified hundreds of loci for major psychiatric disorders and 12 loci for suicide attempt. This study used current GWAS summary statistics for suicide attempt, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder to identify novel loci through shared genetic architecture. Polygenic risk scores (PRS) for suicide attempt and psychiatric disorders were calculated in UK Biobank to examine associations with suicide-related phenotypes. Suicide attempt was found to be polygenic, involving 6,900 genetic risk variants, and showed substantial overlap with other psychiatric disorders (4,200 to 6,800 variants); leveraging these other psychiatric disorders identified 106 novel loci. Genes associated with suicide attempt showed enrichment in synaptic signaling and inflammation, and suicide prevention approaches targeting synaptic dysfunction and inflammation are proposed as a starting point for linking genetic and epigenetic influences to prevention.

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