Norwegian Centre for Mental Disorders Research (NORMENT), University of Oslo and Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway.
Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
Transl Psychiatry. 2021 Nov 25;11(1):599. doi: 10.1038/s41398-021-01725-9.
Oxytocin is a neuromodulator and hormone that is typically associated with social cognition and behavior. In light of its purported effects on social cognition and behavior, research has investigated its potential as a treatment for psychiatric illnesses characterized by social dysfunction, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. While the results of these trials have been mixed, more recent evidence suggests that the oxytocin system is also linked with cardiometabolic conditions for which individuals with severe mental disorders are at a higher risk for developing. To investigate whether the oxytocin system has a pleiotropic effect on the etiology of severe mental illness and cardiometabolic conditions, we explored oxytocin's role in the shared genetic liability of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, type-2 diabetes, and several phenotypes linked with cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes risk using a polygenic pathway-specific approach. Analysis of a large sample with about 480,000 individuals (UK Biobank) revealed statistically significant associations across the range of phenotypes analyzed. By comparing these effects to those of polygenic scores calculated from 100 random gene sets, we also demonstrated the specificity of many of these significant results. Altogether, our results suggest that the shared effect of oxytocin-system dysfunction could help partially explain the co-occurrence of social and cardiometabolic dysfunction in severe mental illnesses.
催产素是一种神经调质和激素，通常与社会认知和行为有关。鉴于其对社会认知和行为的潜在影响，研究已经探索了其作为治疗以社会功能障碍为特征的精神疾病的潜力，例如精神分裂症和双相情感障碍。尽管这些试验的结果喜忧参半，但最近的证据表明，催产素系统也与心血管代谢疾病有关，严重精神障碍患者患这些疾病的风险更高。为了研究催产素系统是否对严重精神疾病和心血管代谢疾病的病因具有多效性影响，我们使用多基因途径特异性方法探讨了催产素在精神分裂症、双相情感障碍、2 型糖尿病以及与心血管疾病和 2 型糖尿病风险相关的几种表型的共同遗传易感性中的作用。对大约 48 万人的大型样本（英国生物库）的分析显示，在分析的各种表型范围内存在统计学显著关联。通过将这些影响与从 100 个随机基因集计算得出的多基因评分进行比较，我们还证明了其中许多显著结果的特异性。总的来说，我们的研究结果表明，催产素系统功能障碍的共同影响可能有助于部分解释严重精神疾病中社会和心血管代谢功能障碍的同时发生。
