Investigation of relationships between bipolar disorder phenotypes and genome-wide significant loci from PGC2 schizophrenia

Schizophrenia (SZ) and Bipolar disorder (BD) show evidence for partial overlap in phenotypic and genetic influences based on family, twins, adoption and Psychiatric Genetic Consortium (PGC) studies. They have lifetime prevalence of about 1% and 2.4%, and heritability estimates of 60-80% and 40-70%, respectively. In the last decade BD has been investigated using dimensional structuring of psychoses based on symptomatic-functional checklists that provides reliable approach to phenotypic assessment.