New statistical methods are being rapidly developed to meet the needs of increasing GWAS sample sizes and ancestral diversity, estimating effect sizes more precisely and increasing the accuracy and generalizability of genetic risk prediction. A potential future use of PRS is in clinical trials, potentially enabling more effective drug treatment targeting in high-risk patients (106). PRS can provide an estimate of how many at risk individuals will be expected to exhibit clinical symptoms or be diagnosed, providing a measurable change from expectation for drug trials. Another promising area is in early intervention, in which at-risk patient populations are more efficiently identified with PRS, for example prior to a prodromal period in schizophrenia. Given high heritability for many disorders and the lack of existing biomarkers due to the inaccessibility of human brain tissue, genetic risk prediction holds especially great promise for psychiatry, and we recommend careful consideration of emerging methods and applications in genetic risk prediction.
