The topic of this meeting will Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Challenges and Opportunities hosted by Dr. Karestan Koenen.

The presenter will be Renato Polimanti.

Bio: Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine; Research Associate at Veterans Administration Connecticut Healthcare Center

Title: Causal Inference Analysis of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Challenges and Opportunities

Summary: Distinguishing association from causation is one of the most debated topics in epidemiology due to the implications for understanding the causes and the consequences of human traits and diseases. There are several challenges to apply causal inference methods based on genetic information on heterogeneous traits. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is among the most heterogeneous psychiatric diagnoses. DSM-5 PTSD criteria include 20 diagnostic symptoms that generate 636,120 possible diagnostic combinations and 52% of them are disjoint combinations. This diagnostic heterogeneity affects our ability to identify PTSD risk loci, limiting our ability to define genetic instruments for causal inference analyses. Leveraging multiple methods and appropriate sensitivity analyses, we tested causal hypotheses combining GWAS data generated by the PGC-PTSD workgroup with other large-scale datasets. Here, we present the results of multiple analyses showing the complex network of effects linking PTSD to traumatic experiences, educational attainment, socioeconomic status, inflammation, blood metabolites, and anthropometric traits.

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