Given previously reported associations between blood-based protein levels and PTSD38,39, we performed protein quantitative trait loci (pQTL) SMR36 analysis for PTSD using data from the UK Biobank Pharma Proteomics Project40 (n = 54,306 samples and n = 1,209 proteins). We identified 16 genes within 9 loci whose protein levels were significantly associated with PTSD (P < 0.05/1,209 and PHEIDI > 0.05) (Fig. 3c and Supplementary Table 20), including members of the TNF superfamily (e.g., CD40, TNFRSF13C), implicating TNF-related immune activation in PTSD.
