Posts by Jordan W. Smoller, MD, ScD
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Psychiatric Disorders Not Associated With Incidental Findings in Medically Actionable Genes
Using the same approach as in a phenome-wide association study, Yen-Chen A. Feng, ScD, Jordan W. Smoller, MD, ScD, and colleagues systematically evaluated data on 15,181 individuals and did not identify any psychiatric manifestations of rare variations in medically actionable genes.
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Developing a Clinical Tool to Predict Suicide Risk
Clinician-researchers at the Center for Precision Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital with colleagues at Harvard University, Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital have developed an algorithm to improve the prediction of suicide risk in clinical settings.
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Sex-specific Genetic Effects Across Neuropsychiatric and Behavioral Traits Identified for the First Time
Jill M. Goldstein, PhD, and Jordan W. Smoller, MD, ScD, of the Department of Psychiatry, and colleagues have reported the first modest evidence of sex-dependent autosomal genetic effects across neuropsychiatric and behavioral traits.
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Exploring Interactions Between Genotype and Sex on the Risk of Psychiatric Disorders
In a large genome-wide genotype-by-sex analysis, Massachusetts General Hospital researchers found that significant sex-dependent effects were enriched for genes related to neuronal development and immune and vascular functions across and within schizophrenia, major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder.
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Suicide Risk Prediction Models Should Be Cost-Effective in U.S. Primary Care
Using electronic health records to predict who needs suicide prevention interventions has been criticized as impractical. But decision modeling by Eric L. Ross, MD, and Jordan W. Smoller, MD, ScD, of the Department of Psychiatry, and colleagues suggests some existing models are cost-effective and warrant pilot studies.
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Social Connection, Television Watching Are Modifiable Factors of Depression
Karmel W. Choi, PhD, Karestan C. Koenen, PhD, and Jordan W. Smoller, MD, ScD, of the Department of Psychiatry, and colleagues used a novel two-stage approach, an exposure-wide association scan followed by Mendelian randomization, to validate actionable targets for efforts to prevent depression.
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Multiple Common Genetic Loci Underlie Eight Psychiatric Disorders
The largest-ever cross-disorder genome-wide association study of psychiatric disorders detected multiple common loci and shared genetic structures.
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Novel Polygenic Method Developed to Predict Genetic Liability of Traits and Disorders
In simulated and real-data analyses, a novel Bayesian method of polygenic prediction consistently outperformed existing methods across a wide range of genetic architectures.
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Leveraging Large-scale Data to Improve Psychiatric Care
Jordan W. Smoller, MD, ScD, is the director of the Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit and is the associate chief for research in the Department of Psychiatry at Mass General. In this video, he discusses his research efforts to leverage large-scale data sets that are now available from a variety of sources, including neuroscience, genomics, electronic health records, to improve the ability to diagnose, detect and treat psychiatric disorders and serious complications of those disorders.
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Machine Learning in Mental Health at Mass General
Massachusetts General Hospital researchers are using big data and machine learning to find patterns or predictive profiles that may indicate risk of suicide.
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Use of Electronic Health Records Genetically Validated for Research Into Bipolar Disorder
Researchers at Mass General were involved in the first study to provide genetic validation of the use of electronic health records in bipolar disorder phenotyping, which should prove to be a boon to genetic research in psychiatry generally.
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Translation, Discovery and Collaboration in Psychiatry
Researchers from the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital discuss their collaborative work in clinical and translational research.
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Can Exercise Reduce Symptoms of Depression?
Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital evaluated genetic data from more than 600,000 adults and found evidence that physical activity likely plays a causal role in reducing depression risk.
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All Humans Carry Genetic Risk Factors for Major Depression
By conducting one of the largest genome-wide association studies in psychiatry, researchers have expanded the understanding of the genetics of major depression—and suggest a new approach to studying who is genetically at high-risk for poor outcomes.
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Longitudinal Data in Electronic Health Records Can Be Used to Predict Risk of Suicide
Previous research has shown that diagnostic codes routinely collected in electronic health records can help predict domestic abuse an average of two years in advance. Could EHR systems also be used to predict suicidal behavior?
Biography
Jordan Smoller, MD, ScD, is a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. He is the associate chief for research for the Mass General Department of Psychiatry and director of psychiatric genetics. He is director of the Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit in Mass General's Center for Human Genetics Research. Dr. Smoller also serves as co-director of the Genetics and Genomics Unit of the Mass General Clinical Research Program, is an Associate Member of the Broad Institute and a Senior Scientist at the Broad’s Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research.
Dr. Smoller earned his undergraduate degree at Harvard University and his medical degree at Harvard Medical School. After completing residency training in psychiatry at McLean Hospital, Dr. Smoller received masters and doctoral degrees in epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. He also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Training Program in Psychiatric Genetics.
The focus of Dr. Smoller’s research interests has been the identification of genetic determinants of childhood and adult psychiatric disorders. Dr. Smoller and colleagues have also been studying genetic predictors of treatment response and the ways in which advances in genetics may impact clinical practice in psychiatry. He is an author of more than 200 scientific articles, book chapters and reviews; the recipient of numerous research awards; and a principal investigator on NIH-funded studies of the genetics of anxiety and the genetics of bipolar disorder, major depression and schizophrenia as well as brain imaging phenotypes.
Neuroscience Care at Mass General
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