Approved research

Genome-wide association studies of chronic pain and the overlap with depression.

Lay summary

The primary aim of this research is to identify genetic associations with chronic pain and to explore how genetic risk factors for chronic pain might overlap with genetic risk factors for depression. This will be achieved by conducting genome-wide association studies (GWAS), making use of data from the UK Biobank genotying project. Please note that a separate application has been made by our group to conduct GWAS studies of depression (application 6553). This project is linked to previous analyses our team have undertaken on Biobank data in the areas of mood disorder, cognitive function, cardiometabolic disease, pain and ethnicity and meets Biobank?s stated purpose of improving the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illnesses by identifying genetic associations with chronic pain. Insights from this work will lead to a better understanding of disease processes in chronic pain and depression, better approaches to diagnosis and ultimately the development of new treatments. This work will consist of genome-wide association studies (GWAS), making use of data from the UK Biobank genotyping project. This GWAS study on chronic pain will make use of phenotypic and genetic data on all Biobank participants (the full cohort). We are requesting data for all Biobank participants and approval to use the dataset requested as part of application 6553 to conduct this research.