Sex differences in depression revealed by large genetics study

3 days ago 1

NEWS AND VIEWS
22 October 2025

A comprehensive genome analysis suggests that women have more genetic risk variants for major depressive disorder than do men, with stronger links to metabolic traits.

Na Cai
1. Na Cai is in the Department of Biosystems and Engineering, ETH Zürich, Basel 4056, Switzerland.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) affects nearly twice as many women as it does men, but the biological reasons for this disparity are elusive. Writing in Nature Communications, Thomas et al.¹ report a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies (GWASs) — an approach for finding links between genetic variations and observable traits — that includes almost 200,000 men and women with MDD. The researchers’ findings begin to unpick the genetic risk factors that are shared (or not) between men and women, and to explain why subtypes of MDD with metabolic symptoms, such as changes in weight, affect women more than men. Importantly, the results highlight how sex-stratified genetic analyses can help scientists to understand the sex-specific pathology of MDD, which is necessary for guiding more-precise treatments in the future. (This article separates people into ‘male’ and ‘female’ to reflect the use in Thomas and colleagues’ paper, but Nature recognizes that sex and gender are not binary and are not necessarily aligned.)

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-03374-0

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