Genetic Susceptibility to Mood Disorders and Risk of Stroke: A Polygenic Risk Score and Mendelian Randomization Study

Background: Mood disorders and strokes are often comorbid, and their health toll worldwide is huge. This study characterizes prognostic and causal roles of mood disorders in stroke. Methods: We tested if genetic susceptibilities for mood disorders were associated with all strokes, ischemic strokes in the Malmö Diet and Cancer cohort (24 631 individuals with a median follow-up of 21.3 (interquartile range: 16.6–23.2) years. We further examined the causal effects for mood disorders on all strokes and ischemic strokes using summary statistics from large genome-wide association studies of mood disorders (up to 609 424 individuals, Psychiatric Genomics Consortium), all strokes and ischemic strokes (up to 446 696 individuals, MEGASTROKE Consortium). Results: Among 24 366 stroke-free participants at baseline, 2632 individuals developed strokes, 2172 of them ischemic, during follow-up. After properly adjusting for well-known risk factors, participants in the highest quintile of polygenic risk scores for mood disorders had 1.45× (95% CI, 1.21–1.74) higher risk of strokes and 1.44× (95% CI, 1.18–1.76) higher risk of ischemic strokes compared with the lowest quintile in women. Mendelian randomization analyses suggested that mood disorders had a causal effect on strokes (odds ratio, 1.07 [95% CI, 1.03–1.11]) and ischemic strokes (odds ratio, 1.09 [95% CI, 1.04–1.13]). Conclusions: Our results suggest a causal role of mood disorders in the risk of stroke. High-risk women could be identified early in life using polygenic risk scores to ultimately prevent mood disorders and strokes.