An available measure of genetic risk for schizophrenia is associated with schizophrenia in health care settings and had pleiotropic effects on related psychiatric disorders as well as other medical syndromes, a new study found. Investigators used electronic health records (EHRs) for 106,160 patients from 4 health care systems to evaluate the penetrance and pleiotropy of genetic risk for schizophrenia. Polygenic risk scores (PRSs) for schizophrenia were calculated from summary statistics and tested for association with 1,359 disease categories. Among the findings:

• PRSs were robustly associated with schizophrenia.
• Patients with the highest risk decile of the PRS distribution had up to 4.6-fold higher odds of schizophrenia compared with those in the bottom decile.
• PRSs were also positively associated with other phenotypes, including anxiety, substance use, memory loss, and neurological and personality disorders.