Work-related dysfunction tied to polygenic profiles for psychiatric disorders, but not bipolar disorder

People with bipolar disorder who have severe mood episodes tend to have a polygenic profile that is different from that associated with long-term occupational dysfunction, reveals a study.

Investigators who examined the associations of polygenic scores (PGSs) for major psychiatric disorders and educational attainment with occupational functioning and psychiatric hospital admissions in bipolar disorder found that long-term sick leave and unemployment significantly correlated with PGSs for schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), major depressive disorder (MDD), and educational attainment.

However, they also found that these occupational dysfunctions were not significantly associated with the PGSs for bipolar disorder. On the other hand, the number of hospital admissions each year correlated with higher PGSs for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, but not with the other PGSs.

“These findings have clinical implications, suggesting that mitigating occupational dysfunction requires interventions other than those deployed to prevent mood episodes,” the investigators said.

The study included 4,782 patients with bipolar disorder and 2,963 controls. All participants were genotyped and linked to Swedish national registers.

The investigators used longitudinal measures from at least 10 years of registry data to derive the percentage of years without employment, percentage of years with long-term sick leave, and mean number of psychiatric hospital admissions per year. They also explored the associations between outcomes and PGSs for bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, MDD, ADHD, and educational attainment were assessed using ordinal regression.

Finally, replication analyses were carried out using data from the Bipolar Disorder Research Network cohort, which involved 4,219 individuals.