Enrichment pathway analysis. The inflammatory genetic background in Bipolar Disorder

IntroductionThe pathophysiology of Bipolar Disorder (BD) is yet to be fully characterized. In the last years attention was focused on neurodevelopment or neurodegenerative events. In this context, hyper- and hypo- activation of inflammatory cascades may play a role in modulating the architecture and function of neuronal tissues. In the present paper we tested the enrichment of molecular pathways related to inflammatory cascades (IL-1, IL-2, IL-6, IL-8, TNF and INF) testing whether genes related to these systems hold more variations associated with the risk for BD than expected.Methods~7000 bipolar patients and controls with genome-wide data available from NIMH dataset were analyzed. SNPs were imputed, checked for quality control, pruned and tested for association (0.01