AKT1 and genetic vulnerability to bipolar disorder

AKT1 encodes a serine/threonine kinase that has as one of its best-known substrates glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK3), a primary target for lithium. AKT1 has been previously been implicated as a vulnerability gene for bipolar disorder (BD). We aimed to associate genetic variants in the AKT1 gene with subgroups of BD. BD patients from a Swedish cohort (N = 831) were phenotyped in regards to their psychotic episodes according to mood-congruence in depression and manias, and compared to controls (N = 1,496). All participants were genotyped for SNPs in AKT1 previously implicated to have a role: rs3730358, rs1130214 and rs3803300. None of the effects reported in earlier studies were statistically significant, including the association between rs3803300 and BD without any psychotic symptoms, rs3803300 and mood-congruent psychosis, rs3803300 and the combined groups, as well as the association between the haplotypes formed by rs3730358 and rs1130214 and risk for BD. In a Bayesian analysis, all Bayes' Factors using default priors supported the null hypothesis in the replication set by a factor of between 5 and 1300 times. Analysis of genome wide association data did not reveal any association between BD and the AKT1 region. We conclude AKT1 is less likely to be a vulnerability gene in BD.