Severe COVID-19 increases the risk of schizophrenia

Ancha Baranova; Hongbao Cao; Fuquan Zhang

doi:10.1016/j.psychres.2022.114809

Severe COVID-19 increases the risk of schizophrenia

Psychiatry Res. 2022 Nov:317:114809. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2022.114809. Epub 2022 Aug 24.

Authors

Ancha Baranova¹, Hongbao Cao², Fuquan Zhang³

Affiliations

¹ School of Systems Biology, George Mason University, Manassas 20110, USA; Research Centre for Medical Genetics, Moscow 115478, Russia.
² School of Systems Biology, George Mason University, Manassas 20110, USA.
³ Institute of Neuropsychiatry, The Affiliated Brain Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, 264 Guangzhou Road, Nanjing 210029, China; Department of Psychiatry, The Affiliated Brain Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing 210029, China. Electronic address: zhangfq@njmu.edu.cn.

Abstract

The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 invades the central nervous system, impacting the mental health of COVID-19 patients. We performed a two-sample Mendelian randomization analysis to assess the potential causal effects of COVID-19 on schizophrenia. Our analysis indicated that genetic liability to hospitalized COVID-19 was associated with an increased risk for schizophrenia (OR: 1.11, 95% CI: 1.02-1.20, P = 0.013). However, genetic liability to SARS-CoV-2 infection was not associated with the risk of schizophrenia (1.06, 0.83-1.37, P = 0.643). Severe COVID-19 was associated with an 11% increased risk for schizophrenia, suggesting that schizophrenia should be assessed as one of the post-COVID-19 sequelae.

Keywords: COVID-19; Mendelian randomization; Schizophrenia.

MeSH terms

COVID-19*
Genome-Wide Association Study
Hospitalization
Humans
Mendelian Randomization Analysis
SARS-CoV-2
Schizophrenia* / epidemiology