Mental health has historically been siloed away from the rest of medicine, resulting in a poor understanding of the relationship between mental and physical health. This EHR-based study showed that genetic risk for MDD and loneliness were just as strongly associated with heart disease as with depression itself. Moreover, the increased risk of CAD persisted in females after adjusting for psychiatric symptoms and multiple other risk factors, suggesting that the excess risk is due to pleiotropic genetic effects and is not simply a behavioral consequence of depression. Identification of these pleiotropic genes could advance both precision medicine and drug development.
