Overview

• An international team analyzed five European-ancestry cohorts from Australia, the Netherlands, the United States and two in the United Kingdom, comparing 130,471 women and 64,805 men with major depression to large control groups.
• Researchers detected roughly twice as many female-specific genetic associations for major depression as male-specific ones, indicating sex-differentiated biological contributions to risk.
• Genetic correlations between depression and metabolic traits, including body mass index and metabolic syndrome, were stronger in women than in men.
• The authors conducted sensitivity analyses to account for the greater number of female cases and noted that the European-only samples limit generalizability to other populations.
• The team has publicly released the results for further analysis, and experts say the findings could inform future sex-tailored diagnostics and treatments even as environmental and social factors remain crucial.