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It was a pleasure to work with Swapnil Awasthi, Stephanie Witt, Stephan Ripke, and Marcella Rietschel, who co-led the study, as well as all our other collaborators! Thanks also to all the funders who supported this research! 7/7

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We want to thank all the participants who donated their time, health information, and biomaterial. This was a major collaborative effort, with more than 20 studies contributing data, including Estonian Biobank, @ukbiobank.ac.uk, @gladstudy.bsky.social, and @finngen.bsky.social. 6/7

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• We find genetic links with continuous traits, including neuroticism, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. • The derived polygenic scores can serve as a powerful research tool. They explain 4.6% of case-control status on the liability scale and show a broad range of associations in PheWAS. 5/7

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• We identify the first genetic risk loci and genes associated with BPD. • The genetic signal shows strong correlations with other mental disorders, particularly PTSD, depression, and ADHD. We also observe shared genetic risk with physical health traits, although to a lesser extent. 4/7

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We aimed to change this by analyzing genetic data from more than 13,000 BPD cases and over 1,000,000 controls in a GWAS meta-analysis. Some of the main findings: • Like other mental disorders, BPD is highly polygenic. We estimate its SNP-based heritability at approximately 17%. 3/7

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Twin and family studies of BPD indicate that, besides the well-established influence of environmental factors such as interpersonal trauma, genetic factors make a substantial contribution to liability for BPD. However, relatively little work has been done to pinpoint specific genetic variants. 2/7

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Science X / Phys.org @sciencex.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

This has been a long time in the making: Our genome-wide association study (GWAS) of borderline personality disorder (BPD) is now out in Nature Genetics. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/7

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The largest genetic analysis of borderline personality disorder identified 11 independent risk regions and nine candidate genes, using data from about 13,000 affected people and 1.1 million controls. doi.org/hcb6qq

medicalxpress.com

Largest genetic analysis of borderline personality disorder identifies 11 risk regions and nine genes

An international team led by the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim has presented the largest genome-wide association study on borderline personality disorder to date.

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Reposted by Fabian Streit

Scott McGrath @smcgrath.phd · 20/07/2026

🧪 Data from 12,339 people with borderline personality disorder powered the largest GWAS for the condition so far. They mapped 11 associated genomic locations, explaining about 17% of inherited risk. The strongest genetic correlation they found was with PTSD. 🧬💻

nature.com

Huge study finds first genetic clues for borderline personality disorder

Largest genetic analysis of the condition so far finds 11 linked locations in the human genome.

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Reposted by Fabian Streit

Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) @pgcgenetics.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

📢 New publication in @nathumbehav.nature.com from the PGC Anxiety Working Group: the largest GWAS of generalised anxiety symptoms to date, analysing ~700k across 14 cohorts. We found 74 genome-wide significant loci, 39 novel for anxiety.

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Fabian Streit @fstreit.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Great new preprint by the @pgcgenetics.bsky.social Suicide Working Group, investigating shared and distinct genetic contributions to different suicidality phenotypes!!!

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Aysu Okbay @aysuo.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Come work with me and @dr-appie.bsky.social in Amsterdam!

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Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) @pgcgenetics.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

There is high symptom and genetic overlap across psychiatric conditions. @andrewgrotzinger.bsky.social et al. (2025) explored this using our #GWAS data of over 1 mil cases across 14 conditions. They assessed the genetic architecture and the functional roles of genes across these conditions.

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Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) @pgcgenetics.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

🧵 New publication from the PGC Anxiety Working Group. Our GWAS meta-analysis of anxiety disorders is now published in @natgenet.nature.com! 🔗: doi.org/10.1038/s415...

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PsyGenOmics @psygenomics.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

New report by the PGC outreach committee: From Genomes to Conversations: Outreach and Engagement in Psychiatric Genetics (2026) An important contribution on why dialogue, and responsible communication must be integral to psychiatric genetics. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

link.springer.com

From Genomes to Conversations: Outreach and Engagement in Psychiatric Genetics - Behavior Genetics

Outreach in psychiatric genetics bridges the gaps across research advancements, clinical practice, and public understanding. Effective communication with a range of audiences faces multiple challenges...

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Na Cai @caina89.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

My department @bsse.ethz.ch is inviting applications for a new assistant professor (tenure-track) in computational immunology, interested candidates please see advert and apply! Deadline 15 April 2026 ethz.ch/en/the-eth-z...

ethz.ch

Assistant Professor (Tenure Track) of Computational Immunology

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medRxivpreprint @medrxivpreprint.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Examining the Contribution of Childhood Maltreatment to the Gender Gap in Depression: Insights from the German National Cohort (NAKO) www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…

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We thank all participants of the @nako.de and the many researchers and staff involved. Special thanks to Aina Kresken and Maja Völker, who led the analyses as part of their Master’s and PhD work 👏

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These findings are based on cross-sectional data, and childhood maltreatment was reported retrospectively, which may introduce recall or reporting bias. Causal interpretations should therefore be made with caution.

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Mediation analyses including all five childhood maltreatment subtypes jointly, showed that childhood maltreatment mediated ~19% of the sex difference in lifetime depression and ~30% of the sex difference in current depression, mainly due to sex differences in exposure.

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We estimated population attributable fractions (PAFs) to quantify the contribution. Overall, maltreatment accounted for 26% of lifetime depression and 33% of current depression, with consistently higher contributions in females. Emotional abuse and emotional neglect showed the largest contributions.

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For lifetime depression (physician’s diagnosis), physical abuse and physical neglect showed stronger associations in females, whereas sexual abuse showed a stronger association in males. All maltreatment subtypes were associated with substantially increased odds of depression in both sexes.

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We examined five types of childhood maltreatment. Females reported higher prevalence of sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and emotional neglect, with the strongest sex difference for sexual abuse (~9.5% vs 2.5%). Physical abuse was slightly more common in males (~8.3% vs 7.7%).

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We analyzed data from 159,045 participants aged 19–72 years from the German National Cohort. Both lifetime depression (physician’s diagnosis) and current depression (PHQ-9 ≥ 10) were more common in females than in males (17.7% vs 10.1% and 9.0% vs 5.9%, respectively).

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Examining the Contribution of Childhood Maltreatment to the Gender Gap in Depression: Insights from the German National Cohort (NAKO)

Happy to share our newest preprint! Depression is more common in females than in males, but it remains insufficiently understood why. Using data from the German National Cohort (NAKO) @nako.de, we investigated whether childhood maltreatment may contribute to this gender gap. doi.org/10.64898/202...

doi.org

Background: Childhood maltreatment is a major risk factor for depression and may contribute to sex differences in depression prevalence. We examined sex-specific associations between childhood maltrea...

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Michael Dufner @michduf.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

New paper out: Some people are systematically better at judging others’ intelligence. Who are the best judges? People WHO are intelligent themselves, have good emotion-perception ability, and who are high in well-being. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.com

The good judge of intelligence

Accurately judging others' intelligence is important, yet little is known about individual differences in this ability. In this study we investigated …

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I want to thank all researchers involved, including Maja Völker, Carolin Callies, and Stephanie Witt, and all the staff and participants of @nako.de. Looking forward to extend this investigation to the longditudinal data available now, and to other data domains including MRI and genetics!

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We observed a clear dose-response relationship: higher daily cigarette consumption correlates with more severe depressive symptoms, while the risk decreases the longer an individual has remained abstinent.

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Our analysis reveals that both lifetime and current depression are lowest in never-smokers, highest in current smokers, and intermediate in former smokers.

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