Genetic exploration of the relationship between liability to psychiatric disorders and acne vulgaris
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Background
Observational epidemiology suggests a link between the dermatological disorder acne vulgaris and several psychiatric disorders. However, the biological mechanisms that underlie the relationship between acne and mental health are poorly characterised.
Methods
Here, we employed a genetic approach using large-scale genome-wide association studies of acne and ten psychiatric disorders to both estimate causal effects and uncover potential shared genetic risk factors.
Results
While multiple psychiatric disorders displayed evidence of small-to-moderate genetic correlations with acne, only genetic liability to schizophrenia was associated with a putative causal effect on the risk of acne. We then investigated shared genetic risk architecture between schizophrenia and acne using a Bayesian approach. This revealed a subset of genetic loci associated with both acne and schizophrenia via shared or different causal variants, implicating biological processes including glutamatergic signalling. Finally, we found that genetic risk for schizophrenia was also associated with increased acne severity.
Conclusions
In summary, we revealed genetic support for a biological relationship between acne and schizophrenia that may at least partially drive the elevated rates of acne amongst people living with schizophrenia.
