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IS GENETICS BEHIND THE CO-OCCURRENCE OF ADHD AND OTHER DISORDERS?

Posted on May 10, 2021May 12, 2021 by Bru Cormand

A group of researchers from Spain, The Netherlands, Germany, Estonia, Denmark and USA have joined efforts to gain insight into the genetics of ADHD and its comorbidities. This ambitious objective was addressed by the Work Package 2 of a big project called CoCA: “Comorbid Conditions of Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)”, funded by the European Union for the period 2016-2021.

In psychiatry, the co-occurrence of different conditions in the same individual (or comorbidity) is the rule rather than the exception. This is particularly true for ADHD, where conditions like major depressive disorder or substance use disorders frequently add to the primary diagnosis and lead to a worse trajectory across the lifespan.

There are different reasons that may explain the advent of the comorbidities: Sometimes the two conditions have independent origins but coincide in a single patient. Comorbidity can also appear as a consequence of a feature of a primary disorder that leads to a secondary disorder. For example, impulsivity, a trait that is common in ADHD, can be an entry point to substance use. Comorbidity can also be the result of shared genetic causes. The latter has been the focus of our investigations and it involves certain risk genes that act on different pathologies, a phenomenon called pleiotropy.

Our project started with an approach based on the exploration of candidate genes, particularly those involved in neurotransmission (i.e. the connectivity between neurons) and also in the regulation of the circadian rhythm. We used genetic data of more than 160,000 patients with any of eight psychiatric disorders, including ADHD, and identified a set of neurotransmission genes that are involved at the same time in ADHD and in autism spectrum disorder [1]. In another study we identified the same gene set as involved in obesity measures [2].

Then we opened our analyses to genome-wide approaches, i.e. to the interrogation of every single gene in the genome. To do that we used different statistical methods, including the estimation of the overall shared genetics between pairs of disorders (genetic correlation, r_g), the prediction of a condition based on the genetic risk factors for another condition (polygenic risk score analysis, PRS) and the establishment of the causal relationships between disorders (mendelian randomization). As a result, we encountered genetic connections between ADHD and several psychiatric disorders, like cannabis or cocaine use disorders [3, 4, 5], alcohol or smoking-related phenotypes [6, 7, 8], bipolar disorder [9], depression [6], disruptive behavior disorder [10], but also with personality or cognition traits, like neuroticism, risk taking, emotional lability, aggressive behavior or educational attainment [6 , 11, 12, 13], or with somatic conditions, such as obesity [11, 12].

All these results and others, reported in more than 40 (!) scientific publications, support our initial hypothesis that certain genetic factors cut across psychiatric disorders and explain, at least in part, the comorbidity that we observe between ADHD and many other conditions. This information can be very useful to anticipate possible clinical trajectories in ADHD patients, and hence prevent potential negative outcomes.

Dr. Bru Cormand is full professor of genetics and head of the department of Genetics, Microbiology & Statistics at the University of Barcelona. He leads workpackage 2 of the CoCA project (www.coca-project.eu) on the genetics of ADHD comorbidity.

References

Connection between sleep and mental health – a special case for ADHD

Posted on April 22, 2021April 22, 2021 by Dina Sarsembayeva

Bad sleep is… well, bad for you

Ever seen that meme with Homer Simpson lying awake in bed until 4 am and then falling asleep 8 minutes before the alarm rings? If it felt relatable, then you definitely know how relevant sleep problems can be! That situation shows problems with falling asleep (insomnia) as well as very late sleep timing (read more about this in my previous blog about circadian delay). Both are linked to an infinite number of health problems, especially mental illness. In fact, a typical teenager on TV can demonstrate how bad sleep affects you. Remember how moody, bad-tempered, inattentive at school they usually are or how much they drink and smoke? Well, bad sleep relates to very similar mental health problems: mood disorders, anxiety, aggression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and bad habits like smoking, drinking alcohol and taking drugs. The connection between bad sleep and ADHD, however, is one of the most studied.

What about sleep in people with ADHD?

We know that up to 80% of ADHD patients suffer from insomnia^1,2 and most of them have a circadian delay³. Researchers commonly find that if a person has insomnia symptoms and later bed times, then this person also suffers from more severe ADHD⁴. Although it’s not clear why exactly this happens, some think that a natural circadian delay doesn’t let you fall asleep at socially acceptable times, so you regularly get insufficient sleep^5,6. Interestingly, people without ADHD who sleep poorly also develop the same symptoms – inattention and hyperactivity⁷. You might even say that insomniacs develop temporary ADHD! This makes the connection between ADHD and sleep even more curious and important.

What did our research find?

My colleagues and I wanted to know if the same association with sleep happens in other mental illness and if it is different from the connection to ADHD. For this, we examined information from around 38,000 persons in The Netherlands with ages from 4 to 91. Each of them filled in a long online survey with questions about their sleep habits and mental health.

Later, we divided all these people into three groups based on their sleep behaviour. The first groups were people who prefer earlier sleep times and reported no insomnia symptoms. The other two groups comprised persons who preferred later sleep times (a sign of circadian delay). These groups differed in one thing: one group had very few symptoms of insomnia and the other a lot.

After that, we measured if some of these groups had more severe symptoms of mental illness, including ADHD. And yes, the groups with circadian delay – even the ones without insomnia – really did have significantly higher severity of all mental illness compared to early sleepers! Moreover, the individuals in the circadian delay group with insomnia had more mental health problems than those who slept well. In ADHD specifically, this link between circadian delay and insomnia was as large for symptoms of inattention as for hyperactivity/impulsivity. Children and adolescents had even stronger relation between poor sleep and mental health problems, just like that moody teenagers I mentioned before.

Why this matters

Insomnia and circadian delay, as we see from these results, is a common problem for different types of mental illness. Good sleep usually means better mental health, so people diagnosed with a mental illness might want to improve their sleep behaviour. The good news is that reducing mild insomnia might be easy: anyone can get blinders to keep their bedroom dark and drink less coffee. Circadian delay, though, is harder to change, because it is mainly ruled by your genes. This means that those born as late-night birds need to adapt their life to a more nocturnal rhythm to avoid worse mental state. Sadly, we all know it is often impossible. Younger people, for whom sleep is so important, still need to wake up unnaturally early for school. Adults go to sleep only late at night, even if they’d happily nap at 9 pm, because they were working all day and need to finish their house chores. Current expectations of a good worker and student fit morning people but fail to help and only cause more insomnia for those with a circadian delay. Unless we want to feed all adolescents melatonin tablets every day, our society needs to be more tolerant to our individual circadian preferences.

Dina Sarsembayeva is a neurologist and a research master’s student at the University of Groningen. She is using the data from the CoCa project to learn if the circadian preferences and sleep problems can be turned into profiles to predict specific psychiatric conditions.

1. Kessler, R. C. et al. Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of mental disorders in the World Health Organization’ s. World Psychiatry 2007;6:168-176) 6, 168–176 (2007).

2. Lugo, J. et al. Sleep in adults with autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Eur. Neuropsychopharmacol. 1–24 (2020) doi:10.1016/j.euroneuro.2020.07.004.

3. Coogan, A. N. & McGowan, N. M. A systematic review of circadian function, chronotype and chronotherapy in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Atten. Defic. Hyperact. Disord. 9, 129–147 (2017).

4. Lugo, J. et al. Sleep in adults with autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Eur. Neuropsychopharmacol. 38, 1–24 (2020).

5. Çetin, F. H. et al. Chronotypes and trauma reactions in children with ADHD in home confinement of COVID-19: full mediation effect of sleep problems. Chronobiol. Int. 37, 1214–1222 (2020).

6. Eng, D. et al. Sleep problems mediate the relationship between chronotype and socioemotional problems during early development. Sleep Med. 64, S104 (2019).

7. Lunsford-Avery, J. R., Krystal, A. D. & Kollins, S. H. Sleep disturbances in adolescents with ADHD: A systematic review and framework for future research. Clin. Psychol. Rev. 50, 159–174 (2016).

Food & mental health: the Eat2beNICE project

Posted on November 18, 2019 by Jeanette Mostert

We all know that a healthy lifestyle is beneficial for our health. But many of us forget that eating healthy, exercising regularly and getting enough sleep is also important for good mental health. In the Eat2beNICE research project a large team of researchers is investigating the link between food and mental health, specifically impulsivity, compulsivity and aggression. To share this knowledge with the rest of the world, they work together with food consultant Sebastian Lege.

The Eat2beNICE project just released a video to explain what the research is about and why it’s important. In this video Sebastian Lege visits the project coordinator Alejandro Arias-Vasquez, en several other researchers in the consortium.

More information about the Eat2beNICE project can be found at http://www.newbrainnutrition.com

Who is the average patient with ADHD?

Posted on March 6, 2019June 27, 2019 by thomaswolfers

Is there an ‘average ADHD brain’? Our research group (from the Radboudumc in Nijmegen) shows that the average patient with ADHD does not exist biologically. These findings were recently published in the journal. Psychological Medicine.

Most biological psychiatry research heavily relies on so-called case-control comparisons. In this approach a group of patients with for instance ADHD is compared against a group of healthy individuals on a number of biological variables. If significant group effects are observed those are related to for instance the diagnosis ADHD. This often results in statements such as individuals with ADHD show differences in certain brain structures. While our results are in line with those earlier detected group effects, we clearly show that a simple comparison of these effects disguises individual differences between patients with the same mental disorder.

Modelling individual brains

In order to show this, we developed a technique called ‘normative modelling’ which allows us to map the brain of each individual patient against typical development. In this way we can see that individual differences in brain structure across individuals with ADHD are far greater than previously anticipated. In future, we hope that this approach provides important insights and sound evidence for an individualized approach to mental healthcare for ADHD and other mental disorders.

Individual differences in ADHD

When we studied the brain scans of individual patients, the differences between those were substantial. Only a few identical abnormalities in the brain occurred in more than two percent of patients. Marquand: “The brains of individuals with ADHD deviate so much from the average that the average has little to say about what might be occurring in the brain of an individual.”

Personalized diagnosis of ADHD

The research shows that almost every patient with ADHD has her or his own biological profile. The current method of making a diagnosis of psychiatric disorders based on symptoms is therefore not sufficient, the authors say: “Variation between patients is reflected in the brain, but despite this enormous variation all these people get the same diagnosis. Thus, we cannot achieve a better understanding of the biology behind ADHD by studying the average patient. We need to understand for each individual what the causes of a disorder may be. Insights based on research at group level say little about the individual patient.”

Re-conceptualize mental disorders

The researchers want to make a fingerprint of individual brains on the basis of differences in relation to the healthy range. Wolfers: “Psychiatrists and psychologists know very well that each patient is an individual with her or his own tale, history and biology. Nevertheless, we use diagnostic models that largely ignore these differences. Here, we raise this issue by showing that the average patient has limited informative value and by including biological, symptomatic and demographic information into our models. In future we hope that this kinds of models will help us to re-conceptualize mental disorders such as ADHD.”

Further reading

Wolfers, T., Beckmann, C.F., Hoogman, M., Buitelaar, J.K., Franke, B., Marquand, A.F. (2019). Individual differences v. the average patient: mapping the heterogeneity in ADHD using normative models. Psychological Medicine, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291719000084 .

This blog was written by Thomas Wolfers and Andre Marquand from the Radboudumc and Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. On 15 March 2019 Thomas Wolfers will defend his doctoral thesis entitled ‘Towards precision medicine in psychiatry’ at the Radboud university in Nijmegen. You can find his thesis at http://www.thomaswolfers.com

How can we make sense of comorbidity?

Posted on August 10, 2016August 10, 2016 by janhaavik

Comorbidity, defined as the simultaneous occurrence of more than one disorder in a single patient, is commonplace in psychiatry and somatic medicine. In research, as well as in routine clinical settings.

In March 2016 the new H2020 collaborative project “CoCA” (Comorbidity in adult ADHD) was officially launched, with a 3-day kick-off meeting in Frankfurt, Germany. This ambitious project, which is coordinated by professor Andreas Reif and is co-maintaining this shared blog, will investigate multiple aspects of comorbidity in ADHD.

For instance, CoCA will “identify and validate mechanisms common to the most frequent psychiatric conditions, specifically ADHD, mood and anxiety disorders, and substance use disorders (SUD), as well as a highly prevalent somatic disorder, i.e. obesity”.

As reflected in this bold mission, most scientists trained in the biological sciences agree that studies of overlapping and concurrent phenomena may reveal some underlying common mechanisms, e.g. shared genetic or environmental risk factors.

However, particularly in psychiatry and psychology, the origins of comorbidity have been fiercely debated. Critics have argued that observed comorbidities are “artefacts” of the current diagnostic systems (Maj, Br J Psychiatry, 2005 186: 182–184).

This discussion relates to fundamental questions of how much of our scientific knowledge reflects an independent reality, or is merely a product of our own epistemological traditions. In psychiatry, the DSM and ICD classification systems have been accused of actively producing psychiatric phenomena, including artificial diagnoses and high comorbidity rates, rather than being “true” representations of underlying phenomena. Thus, the “constructivist” tradition argues that diagnostic systems are projected onto the phenomena of psychiatry, while “realists” acknowledge the presence of an independent reality of psychiatric disorders.

In an attempt to explain these concepts and their implications, psychiatric diagnoses and terminology have been termed “systems of convenience”, rather than phenomena that can be shown to be true or false per se (van Loo and Romeijn, Theor Med Bioeth. 2015, 41-60). It remains to be seen whether such philosophical clarifications will advance the ongoing debate related to the nature of medical diagnoses and their co-occurrence.

CoCA will not resolve these controversies. Neither can we expect that our new data will convince proponents of such opposing perspectives.

It is important to acknowledge the imperfections and limitations of concepts and instruments used in (psychiatric) research.

However, it may provide some comfort that similar fundamental discussions have a long tradition in other scientific disciplines, such as physics and mathematics. Rather than being portrayed as a weakness or peculiarity of psychiatric research, I consider that an active debate, with questioning and criticism is considered an essential part of a healthy scientific culture.

Hereby, you are invited to join this debate on this blog page! Wooden ruler vector