Distinct patterns of genetic overlap among multimorbidities revealed with trivariate MiXeR.

Abstract

Background: Multimorbidities are a global health challenge. Accumulating evidence indicates that overlapping genetic architectures underlie comorbid complex human traits and disorders. This can be quantified for a pair of phenotypes using various techniques. Still, the pattern of genetic overlap between three distinct complex phenotypes, which is important for understanding multimorbidities, has not been possible to quantify.

Methods: Here, we present and validate the novel trivariate MiXeR tool, which disentangles the pattern of genetic overlap between three complex phenotypes using summary statistics from genome-wide association studies. Our simulations show that trivariate MiXeR can reliably reconstruct different patterns of genetic overlap and estimate the proportions of genetic overlap between three phenotypes.

Results: We found substantial genetic overlap between gastro-intestinal and brain diseases supporting a genetic basis of the gut-brain axis-the pattern consistent with pairwise analysis. However, the pattern of genetic overlap between three diverse cardiometabolic and renal health indicators and three immune-linked disorders revealed a much larger genomic component shared between all phenotypes than expected from separate pairwise analyses. This suggests the existence of core pathways underlying distinct but related chronic conditions.

Conclusions: Overall, trivariate MiXeR offers a novel and efficient tool for investigating patterns of genetic overlap among three complex phenotypes. This contributes to a better understanding of genetic relationships between complex traits and disorders, potentially providing new insights into the mechanisms underlying common multimorbidities. Trivariate MiXeR is freely available at https://github.com/precimed/mix3r .