Depression with atypical neurovegetative symptoms shares genetic predisposition with immuno-metabolic traits and alcohol consumption

BACKGROUND: Depression is a highly prevalent and heterogeneous disorder. This study aims to determine whether depression with atypical features shows different heritability and different degree of overlap with polygenic risk for psychiatric and immuno-metabolic traits than other depression subgroups. METHODS: Data included 30 069 European ancestry individuals from the UK Biobank who met criteria for lifetime major depression. Participants reporting both weight gain and hypersomnia were classified as ↑WS depression (N = 1854) and the others as non-↑WS depression (N = 28 215). Cases with non-↑WS depression were further classified as ↓WS depression (i.e. weight loss and insomnia; N = 10 142). Polygenic risk scores (PRS) for 22 traits were generated using genome-wide summary statistics (Bonferroni corrected p = 2.1 × 10(−4)). Single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-based heritability of depression subgroups was estimated. RESULTS: ↑WS depression had a higher polygenic risk for BMI [OR = 1.20 (1.15–1.26), p = 2.37 × 10(−14)] and C-reactive protein [OR = 1.11 (1.06–1.17), p = 8.86 × 10(−06)] v. non-↑WS depression and ↓WS depression. Leptin PRS was close to the significance threshold (p = 2.99 × 10(−04)), but the effect disappeared when considering GWAS summary statistics of leptin adjusted for BMI. PRS for daily alcohol use was inversely associated with ↑WS depression [OR = 0.88 (0.83–0.93), p = 1.04 × 10(−05)] v. non-↑WS depression. SNP-based heritability was not significantly different between ↑WS depression and ↓WS depression (14.3% and 12.2%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: ↑WS depression shows evidence of distinct genetic predisposition to immune-metabolic traits and alcohol consumption. These genetic signals suggest that biological targets including immune-cardio-metabolic pathways may be relevant to therapies in individuals with ↑WS depression.