Third, the PRS from strictly defined LifetimeMDD predicted MDD disease status better in the PGC29-MDD cohorts, which had a higher percentage of cases fulfilling DSM-5 symptom criteria (Supplementary Table 21 and Extended Data Fig. 8; Pearson r2 between the AUC and percentage of cases in PGC29-MDD cohorts fulfilling DSM-5 symptom criteria = 0.26, P = 0.025 at PRS P value = 0.1). This is consistent with the interpretation that LifetimeMDD captures signals specific to MDD. We did not observe such a trend for GPpsy (Pearson r = 0.02, P = 0.57 at PRS P value = 0.1) or any other definition of depression (Supplementary Table 23), suggesting their lower specificity for MDD.
