Genomic contributions to anxiety disorders

Anxiety disorders (ADs)-including generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder (social phobia), and specific phobia-are characterized by the anticipation of future threats, an excess of fear, and related behavioral disturbances. ADs are the most common class of mental disorders worldwide (with a lifetime prevalence of 28.8%); and may be associated with notably impaired quality of life in affected individuals. Family and twin studies provide evidence for the heritability of these disorders, ranging from 0.32 for generalized anxiety disorder, to 0.48 for panic disorder. However, candidate gene association studies largely failed to identify replicable causal or risk variants. More recently, unbiased whole-genome approaches have emphasized the polygenic nature of ADs, as well as the genetic overlap between anxiety and other disorders. In the future, pooling of resources and datasets across interdisciplinary and cross-country consortia, as well as increased representation of populations of diverse ancestry in these large-scale analyses, will be key to improved power for scientific discovery and to optimizing the translational potential of these findings.