Obsessive-compulsive Disorder: The Genetic Links Between Traits and Clinical Diagnosis
Original Article Reference
This SciPod is a summary of the open access paper ‘Genome-wide association study of pediatric obsessive-compulsive traits: shared genetic risk between traits and disorder’, published in the journal Translational Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-020-01121-9
About this episode
Although obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a commonly occurring psychiatric disorder, the underlying genetic basis has until recently, remained poorly defined. Drs Christie Burton, Jennifer Crosbie, and Russell Schachar at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto, Canada, and Dr. Paul Arnold at the University of Calgary and The Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research & Education and their extensive network of collaborators conducted a genome-wide association study to address this key gap. These researchers are the first to empirically demonstrate that OCD and obsessive-compulsive traits have a shared genetic risk, and start to pinpoint the genetic basis of this.
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