The collection of data from this cohort has now been completed and analyses of the data are now underway. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Family Study of Affective Spectrum Disorders has included numerous comparable measures of psychiatric and cardiovascular phenotypes that can be analyzed to develop hypotheses for COLAUS and conversely. The major papers on familial aggregation of mood disorder subtypes have both been accepted during the past year. We showed that mania and depression are strongly familial, but are transmitted independently in families (Merikangas et al, in press). This finding was replicated by the parallel Lausanne Family Study, which also demonstrated that psychosis was independently transmitted in families (Vandeleur et al, in press). In terms of cardiovascular disease comorbidity, we recently found an association between atypical depression, alcohol misuse and cardiovascular disease (Glaus et al, 2012). Public Health Impact: Cardiovascular diseases, their well-established risk factors and mental disorders have the greatest public health impact of all chronic non-infectious human diseases (Vandeleur et al, 2012). Moreover, a recent World Health Organization (WHO) projection of future population health concluded that by 2030, unipolar depressive disorders and ischemic heart disease (IHD) will be among the three leading causes of disease burden worldwide. Given the major public health impact of both CVD/CVRF and mental disorders, the study of the mechanisms underlying their associations is of high clinical and scientific relevance. Future Plans: The next phase of this project involves joint analysis of the family study data on mood disorder subtypes, hyperthymia, comorbid anxiety, sleep disorders and migraine, and analysis of the biomarker and clinical data in the Lausanne site. We then plan to integrate the family study data and common biomarkers from the NIMH Family Study with those of the COLAUS Study to enhance analytic power and to cross-replicate the findings. We have begun to add the electronic diary and activity measures to the COLAUS study and have begun a collaboration with Johns Hopkins to coordinate the new activity measures and analytic methods. Two chief goals in this next phase will be to: 1) implement mobile technologies developed in our studies at NIMH Intramural Research Program and 2) conduct joint analyzes of NIMH Family Study adults and children. The results will then be used to guide plans for future follow-up and extension of the study samples.
