Pathway-based analysis for genome-wide association study data of bipolar disorder provides new insights for genetic study

Bipolar disorder （BD） is an episodic recurrent pathological mood disturbance with estimated heritability ranging from 80%-85% （Barnett and Smoller, 2009）. Although many studies have indicated that BD is a polygenic disease influenced by many genes with small effect, the pathogenesis of BD is still not well understood. According to the catalog of published genome-wide association studies （GWAS） （Welter et al., 2014）, there have been 31 BD GWASs （including bipolar disorder related symptoms and combined GWAS with other related disorders）till 01/15/2015, including the largest BD GWAS from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium （PGC） （Sklar et al., 2011）.