Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified several common genetic variants influencing major depression and general cognitive abilities, but little is known about whether the two share any of their genetic aetiology. Here we investigate shared genomic architectures between major depression (MD) and general intelligence (INT) with the MiXeR statistical tool and their overlapping susceptibility loci with conjunctional false discovery rate (conjFDR), which evaluate the level of overlap in genetic variants and improve the power for gene discovery between two phenotypes. We analysed GWAS data on MD (n = 480,359) and INT (n = 269,867) to characterize polygenic architecture and identify genetic loci shared between these phenotypes. Despite non-significant genetic correlation (r_g = −0.0148, P = 0.50), we observed large polygenic overlap and identified 92 loci shared between MD and INT at conjFDR < 0.05. Among the shared loci, 69 and 64 are new for MD and INT, respectively. Our study demonstrates polygenic overlap between these phenotypes with a balanced mixture of effect.

全基因组关联研究 (GWAS) 已经确定了几种影响重度抑郁症和一般认知能力的常见遗传变异，但对于这两者是否具有共同的遗传病因知之甚少。在这里，我们使用 MiXeR 统计工具研究重度抑郁症 (MD) 和一般智力 (INT) 之间的共享基因组结构及其重叠的易感位点和联合错误发现率 (conjFDR)，评估遗传变异的重叠水平并提高功效用于两种表型之间的基因发现。我们分析了 MD ( n  = 480,359) 和 INT ( n  = 269,867) 的 GWAS 数据，以表征多基因结构并识别这些表型之间共享的基因位点。尽管不显着的遗传相关性（r _g  = −0.0148, P  = 0.50)，我们观察到大的多基因重叠，并在 conjFDR < 0.05 时确定了 MD 和 INT 之间共享的 92 个位点。在共享位点中，MD 和 INT 分别有 69 和 64 个新位点。我们的研究表明这些表型之间的多基因重叠具有平衡的混合效应。