Genetics of borderline personality disorder and its associations with other psychiatric disorders and adverse childhood experiences

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a complex psychiatric illness often
comorbid with other psychiatric disorders and characterized by a history of adverse childhood experiences. Our aim in this project is to use Danish and Swedish registers to study the genetics of BPD and its associations with psychiatric comorbidities and childhood adversity. Using data from the iPSYCH2015 sample, we will conduct the largest genome-wide association study (GWAS) of BPD to date, and study how polygenic risk and childhood adversity jointly affect the likelihood of developing BPD within the context of different psychiatric comorbidities. We will also estimate the genetic and environmental association between BPD and relevant comorbidities using a family co-aggregation design in the Swedish registers. This project will lead to increased understanding of the genetic association between BPD and other psychiatric disorders, as well as the interplay between genetic and environmental risk factors in BPD.