Genetically Informed Study Highlights Income-Independent Effect of Schizophrenia Liability on Mental and Physical Health

Individuals with schizophrenia (SCZ) suffer from comorbidities that substantially reduce their life expectancy. Socioeconomic inequalities could contribute to many of the negative health outcomes associated with SCZ. We investigated genome-wide datasets related to SCZ (52 017 cases and 75 889 controls) from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, household income (HI; N = 361 687) from UK Biobank, and 2202 medical endpoints assessed in up to 342 499 FinnGen participants. A phenome-wide genetic correlation analysis of SCZ and HI was performed, also assessing whether SCZ genetic correlations were influenced by the HI effect on SCZ. Additionally, SCZ and HI direct effects on medical endpoints were estimated using multivariable Mendelian randomization (MR). SCZ and HI showed overlapping genetic correlations with 70 traits (P