2025/01/01 by Stefana Aicoboaie, Edoardo Pappaianni, Mohamed Abdulkadir +2 · 1 voice
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Autism Spectrum Disorder Research #Eating Disorders and Behaviors #Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Disorders
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0033291725101839
openalex publication_date 2025/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/11/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/02
Abstract Background Shared genetic risk has been shown across psychiatric disorders. In particular, anorexia nervosa (AN), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and schizophrenia (SCZ) show shared genetic risk that matches clinical evidence of shared illness and cognitive phenotypes. Given this evidence, we leveraged a large US-based population-based study to determine genetic associations of disorder-specific and shared psychiatric, cognitive, and brain markers and explore whether the latter might be state versus trait markers in eating disorders. Methods We used data from the population-based Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort ( N = 4,729) and conducted sex-stratified analyses to test for associations between genetic risk for three disorders (AN, OCD, and SCZ) and mental health phenotypes, neurocognitive traits, and cortical features in a non-clinical population. Exploratory analyses on cortical features were run on a subset with neuroimaging data ( N = 626). Results Genetic risk for AN was significantly associated with body image distortion ( p FDR = 0.02), and body image distortion was significantly related to a reduction in grey matter volume ( p FDR = 0.05). Conclusion Genetic risk for AN associates with AN trait in a non-clinical sample of youth, particularly in females. Whilst genetic risk was not associated with cognitive or cortical markers, the AN phenotype was associated with cortical markers.