How do experts in psychiatric genetics view the clinical utility of polygenic risk scores for schizophrenia?

Abstract

Polygenic risk scores (PRS) are promising for identifying common variant-related inheritance for psychiatric conditions but their integration into clinical practice depends on their clinical utility and psychiatrists' understanding of PRS. Our online survey explored these issues with 276 professionals working in psychiatric genetics (RR: 19%). Overall, participants demonstrated knowledge of how to interpret PRS results. Their performance on knowledge-based questions was positively correlated with participants' self-reported familiarity with PRS (r = 0.21, p = 0.0006) although differences were not statistically significant (Wald Chi-square = 3.29, df = 1, p = 0.07). However, only 48.9% of all participants answered all knowledge questions correctly. Many participants (56.5%), especially researchers (42%), indicated having at least occasional conversations about the role of genetics in psychiatric conditions with patients and/or family members. Most participants (62.7%) indicated that PRS are not yet sufficiently robust for assessment of susceptibility to schizophrenia; most significant obstacles were low predictive power and lack of population diversity in available PRS (selected, respectively, by 53.6% and 29.3% of participants). Nevertheless, 89.8% of participants were optimistic about the use of PRS in the next 10 years, suggesting a belief that current shortcomings could be addressed. Our findings inform about the perceptions of psychiatric professionals regarding PRS and the application of PRS in psychiatry.