Human accelerated genome regions with value in medical genetics and drug discovery

•Evolutionary insights are helpful in various medical fields.•HARs are significantly enriched with neurological disorder-associated genes.•Approved drugs target nearly twice more HAR genes than in-research drugs.•All the approved atypical antipsychotics target at least one HAR gene. Accumulated evolutionary knowledge not only benefits our understanding of the pathogenesis of diseases, but also help in the search for new drug targets. This is further supported by the recent finding that human accelerated regions (HARs) identified by comparative genomic studies are linked to human neural system evolution and are also associated with neurological disorders. Here, we analyze the associations between HARs and diseases and drugs. We found that 32.42% of approved drugs target at least one HAR gene, which is higher than the ratio of in-research drugs. More interestingly, HAR gene-targeted drugs are most significantly enriched with agents treating neurological disorders. Thus, HAR genes have important implications in medical genetics and drug discovery.