Unveiling causal relationship between white matter tracts and psychiatric disorders
White matter tracts (WMTs), which mediate information transmission in the brain, are closely associated with the pathogenesis of psychiatric disorders, yet the causality of their associations remain unclear. Thus, we employed two-sample bidirectional Mendelian randomization to explore the causality between WMTs and 10 psychiatric disorders. We found that one standard deviation changes of WMTs metrics modified risks for 8 psychiatric disorders by 2·2% to 71·4%. For example, increased fornix/stria terminalis radial diffusivities elevated PTSD risk by 8.3%, while heightened mode anisotropy reduced Tourette syndrome risk by 71.4%. Reversely, alcohol use disorder increased the risk of WMTs abnormalities. Our study provides novel insights into the potential causality between WMTs and psychiatric disorders, indicating that alterations of WMTs may serve as biomarkers for psychiatric disorders.
Authors
- Jie Shi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6567-8160)
- Suhua Chang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7465-3985)
- Yanping Bao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1881-0939)
- Xiao Lin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0495-1220)
- Yifan Yu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7455-6525)
- Jie Sun (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0702-9880)
- Tianye Jia (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5399-2953)
- Sizhi Ai (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5701-1235)
- Kai Yuan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3498-8163)
- Teng Gao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-2980-7759)
Institutions
- Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College (CN)
- Peking University (CN)
- Fudan University (CN)
- Shanghai Institute for Science of Science (CN)
- National Institutes for Food and Drug Control (CN)
- Peking University Third Hospital (CN)
- Peking University Sixth Hospital (CN)
- Shanghai Center for Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Technology (CN)
- Guangzhou Medical University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Communications Biology
- Published
- 2025-08-14
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-025-08669-6
- Citations
- 15
- Primary Topic
- Advanced Neuroimaging Techniques and Applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 20.40
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- National Key Research and Development Program of China