Shared genetic links between frontotemporal dementia and psychiatric disorders

BACKGROUND: Epidemiological and clinical studies have suggested comorbidity between frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and psychiatric disorders. FTD patients carrying specific mutations were at higher risk for some psychiatric disorders, and vice versa, implying potential shared genetic etiology, which is still less explored. METHODS: We examined the genetic correlation using summary statistics from genome-wide association studies and analyzed their genetic enrichment leveraging the conditional false discovery rate method. Furthermore, we explored the causal association between FTD and psychiatric disorders with Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis. RESULTS: We identified a significant genetic correlation between FTD and schizophrenia at both genetic and transcriptomic levels. Meanwhile, robust genetic enrichment was observed between FTD and schizophrenia and alcohol use disorder. Seven shared genetic loci were identified, which were mainly involved in interleukin-induced signaling, synaptic vesicle, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor signaling pathways. By integrating cis-expression quantitative trait loci analysis, we identified MAPT and CADM2 as shared risk genes. MR analysis showed mutual causation between FTD and schizophrenia with nominal association. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings provide evidence of shared etiology between FTD and schizophrenia and indicate potential common molecular mechanisms contributing to the overlapping pathophysiological and clinical characteristics. Our results also demonstrate the essential role of autoimmunity in these diseases. These findings provide a better understanding of the pleiotropy between FTD and psychiatric disorders and have implications for therapeutic trials. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT: [Image: see text] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12916-022-02335-y.