Psychiatric disorders co-occur often with autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, and inflammatory bowel disease. This is reflected in shared genetic risk factors for psychiatric and autoimmune disorders, suggesting similar underlying mechanisms in biology and behaviour.
In this Donders Challenge, we combine expertise across neuroscience, psychiatry, genetics, and endopcrynology, to better understand such shared mechanisms. Specifically, the goal of this Challenge is to formulate hypotheses on the most likely and most prevalent mechanisms underlying this pattern. A better understanding of this can ultimately give clues to improve treatment.