In a biggest study of it’s kind (693,869 people), it identified 74 locations in the genome where genetic differences were linked to anxiety symptoms. Around half of these have been reported in previous  anxiety genome wide association studies, but the remainder (39 of the loci) were novel.

>Published in [Nature Human Behaviour](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-026-02476-7), the research has found the largest number of genetic associations with anxiety to date. By linking genetic data to severity of symptoms rather than the yes/no category of a clinical diagnosis, it brings new understanding to the biological continuum behind anxiety that can range from healthy stress responses to debilitating disorder.

>The new research is a genome wide association study (GWAS) and analyses the DNA of many people – in this case nearly 700,000 – to identify which genetic differences occur more often in those who experience more severe anxiety symptoms.

>Beyond identifying the largest number of anxiety-associated loci to date, the results provide support for the role of certain genes in anxiety, such as PCLO and SORCS3. Many of the implicated genes are particularly active in brain tissue and are involved in how nerve cells communicate with each other. The analysis also found that common genetic variation explains around 6% of the differences in anxiety symptom severity between people, leaving substantial room for environmental influences, gene-environment interactions, and undetected genetic effects.

>The researchers also calculated polygenic scores for anxiety, which summarise each individual’s genetic risk. The scores were created using the European-ancestry GWAS results, in separate samples of people from European, African and South Asian populations, and explained 1.2% to 2.9% of the variance in anxiety symptom severity. The polygenic risk score results provide some support for shared genetic influences across these groups, but ancestry-specific GWAS remain necessary to identify population-specific genetic risk. At present, there are not enough datasets available with information on both anxiety symptoms and genetics in people with African or South Asian ancestry to run statistically meaningful GWAS.

>There was a broad range of significant genetic correlations of anxiety with both mental and physical health conditions, including depression, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic pain, coronary artery disease, endometriosis and migraine.