Genetic overlap between mood instability and alcohol-related phenotypes suggests shared biological underpinnings

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a pervasive and devastating mental illness with high comorbidity rates with other mental disorders. Understanding the genetic architecture of this comorbidity could be improved by focusing on intermediate traits that show positive genetic correlation with the disorders. Thus, we aimed to characterize the shared vs. unique polygenicity of AUD, alcohol consumption (AC) and mood instability (MOOD) –beyond genetic correlation, and boost discovery for jointly-associated loci. Summary statistics for MOOD (a binary measure of the tendency to report frequent mood swings), AC (number of standard drinks over a typical consumption week) and AUD GWASs (Ns > 200,000) were analyzed to characterize the cross-phenotype associations between MOOD and AC, MOOD and AUD and AC and AUD. To do so, we used a newly established pipeline that combines (i) the bivariate causal mixture model (MiXeR) to quantify polygenic overlap and (ii) the conjunctional false discovery rate (conjFDR) to discover specific jointly associated genomic loci, which were mapped to genes and biological functions. MOOD was highly polygenic (10.4k single nucleotide polymorphisms, SNPs, SD = 2k) compared to AC (4.9k SNPs, SD = 0.6k) and AUD (4.3k SNPs, SD = 2k). The polygenic overlap of MOOD and AC was twice that of MOOD and AUD (98% vs. 49%), with opposite genetic correlation (−0.2 vs. 0.23), as confirmed in independent samples. MOOD&AUD associated SNPs were significantly enriched for brain genes, conversely to MOOD&AC. Among 38 jointly associated loci, fifteen were novel for MOOD, AC and AUD. MOOD, AC and AUD were also strongly associated at the phenotypic level. Overall, using multilevel polygenic quantification, joint loci discovery and functional annotation methods, we evidenced that the polygenic overlap between MOOD and AC/AUD implicated partly shared biological underpinnings, yet, clearly distinct functional patterns between MOOD&AC and MOOD&AUD, suggesting new mechanisms for the comorbidity of AUD with mood disorders.