科学家对13.5万多名有抑郁症的人进行了分析，研究者已经精确的找到了 44个与抑郁状况有关的基因变异。其中有30个基因是以前从未确认过的。
抑郁症影响全世界约14%的人。为了更好地理解基因是如何发挥作用的，精神疾病基因组工作组（Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, PGC）——一个涉及200多名研究者的团队——将来自抑郁症患者的数据与近34.5万人的情况进行了比较。
19个显著路径结果的生成拓扑映射图GTM
在该工作组确认的44个变异中，有些基因还与诸如精神分裂症之类精神疾病如有关。
伦敦国王学院的Gerome Breen从事了该项分析，他说：“新发现的基因变体有可能通过发现新的和改进的疗法来开辟道路，进而重振抑郁症的治疗。”
然而，目前尚不清楚究竟这些基因是如何影响或导致了抑郁症。因为这些基因有这么多，所以不太可能开发出针对所有靶基因的单一疗法。
Naomi R. Wray, Genome-wide association analyses identify 44 risk variants and refine the genetic architecture of major depression Nature Geneticsvolume 50, pages 668–681 (2018) doi:10.1038/s41588-018-0090-3
www.psychspace.com心理学空间网论文摘要：
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common illness accompanied by considerable morbidity, mortality, costs, and heightened risk of suicide. We conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis based in 135,458 cases and 344,901 controls and identified 44 independent and significant loci. The genetic findings were associated with clinical features of major depression and implicated brain regions exhibiting anatomical differences in cases. Targets of antidepressant medications and genes involved in gene splicing were enriched for smaller association signal. We found important relationships of genetic risk for major depression with educational attainment, body mass, and schizophrenia: lower educational attainment and higher body mass were putatively causal, whereas major depression and schizophrenia reflected a partly shared biological etiology. All humans carry lesser or greater numbers of genetic risk factors for major depression. These findings help refine the basis of major depression and imply that a continuous measure of risk underlies the clinical phenotype.
重性抑郁症（MDD）是一种常见的疾病，伴随着相当大的发病率、死亡率、成本和自杀风险。我们在135,458病例和344,901例对照的基础上进行了全基因组关联荟萃分析，确定了44个独立的和显著的基因座。遗传结果与重性抑郁症的临床特征相关，并涉及了病例中脑区表现出的解剖学差异。抗抑郁药物和参与基因剪接的基因的靶点被富集以用于较小的关联信号。我们发现了重性忧郁症与教育程度、体重和精神分裂症之间的重要关系：较低的教育程度和较高的体重（与MDD）具有假定因果关系，而重性抑郁症和精神分裂症反映了部分共享的生物病因学。所有的人类都会携带较少或更多的重度抑郁症的遗传风险因子。这些发现有助于改善重性抑郁症的基础，并意味着持续的风险测量是临床表型的基础。
