An overview of posttraumatic stress disorder genetic studies by analyzing and integrating genetic data into genetic database PTSDgene

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating psychiatric syndrome with complex etiology. Studies aiming to explore genetic susceptibility and environmental triggers of PTSD have been increasing. However, the results are limited and highly heterogeneous. To understand the genetic study status of PTSD and explore more reliable candidates, we obtained 105 PTSD related genetic studies by comprehensively literature searching and filtering 1762 studies. Detailed phenotype and sample information for each study and association results for each genetic marker were extracted.

Based on the extracted data, we reviewed the PTSD genetic research status and further conducted bioinformatics analyses for the genetic data. Our analyses summarized the landscape of PTSD genetic studies, identified the genes with most genetic evidence, discovered the biological function of the candidate variants/genes and enlarged the overall candidates for future investigations. All the data were stored in the PTSDgene database (http://ptsdgene.psych.ac.cn). We hope PTSDgene could be a platform for the rapid growth of PTSD genetic data and provide new insights into the pathogenesis of PTSD.