Substantial challenges for genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of major depression (as well as other psychiatric conditions) include the heterogeneity of the disorder, its degree of polygenicity and the over-representation of European ancestry among study participants. To improve upon previous efforts, a recent paper in Nature Genetics performed a GWAS meta-analysis of data from 21 cohorts that included individuals of African, East Asian, South Asian, and Hispanic/Latin American ancestry, resulting in a highly diverse GWAS of major depression. The authors also meta-analyzed these data with previously published data from individuals of European ancestry and performed a transcriptome-wide association study (TWAS) that resulted in 43 ‘high-confidence’ major-depression-associated genes. Overall, there was a limited degree of transferability of major depression loci across ancestry groups, yet the inclusion of diverse ancestry groups enabled the authors to better fine-map loci associated with major depression. Going forward, one hopes that increasingly large and diverse genetic studies will facilitate the discovery of underlying biological mechanisms that can, in turn, be used to develop novel treatments.

重度抑郁症（以及其他精神疾病）的全基因组关联研究（GWAS）面临的重大挑战包括该疾病的异质性、其多基因性程度以及研究参与者中欧洲血统的过度代表性。为了改进之前的努力，《自然遗传学》最近发表的一篇论文对 21 个队列的数据进行了 GWAS 荟萃分析，其中包括非洲、东亚、南亚和西班牙/拉丁美洲血统的个体，从而得出了主要人群的高度多样化的 GWAS。沮丧。作者还将这些数据与之前发表的欧洲血统个体的数据进行了荟萃分析，并进行了全转录组关联研究 (TWAS)，得出了 43 个“高可信度”的重度抑郁症相关基因。总体而言，重度抑郁症基因座在不同祖先群体之间的可转移性有限，但纳入不同的祖先群体使作者能够更好地精细绘制与重度抑郁症相关的基因座。展望未来，人们希望日益大规模和多样化的基因研究将有助于发现潜在的生物学机制，进而可用于开发新的治疗方法。