liability(Schizophrenia Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, 2014). A similar story has been found for other complex, highly heritable traits such as height, where no significant variant associations were detected with 5,000 genomes, but an analysis of 250,000 individuals was able to identify over 400 significant loci and account for up to 29% of the trait variance (Wood et al., 2014). Parallel analyses for multiple disorders indicate there is a “breakthrough point” of sample size after which discovery rates increase exponentially, although this threshold differs across phenotypes (O’Donovan, 2015). The incorporation of these genome-wide polygenic scores based on findings from large-scale genetics consortia represents a more direct bridge from prevention science to cutting-edge genetics. And as the predictive ability of these scores improves, so too will their utility for inclusion in prevention studies.
