Genetic variants linked to education predict longevity

Abstract

Educational attainment is associated with many health outcomes, including longevity. It is also known to be substantially heritable. Here, we used data from three large genetic epidemiology cohort studies (Generation Scotland, n = ∼17,000; UK Biobank, n = ∼115,000; and the Estonian Biobank, n = ∼6,000) to test whether education-linked genetic variants can predict lifespan length. We did so by using cohort members' polygenic profile score for education to predict their parents' longevity. Across the three cohorts, meta-analysis showed that a 1 SD higher polygenic education score was associated with ∼2.7% lower mortality risk for both mothers (total n deaths = 79,702) and ∼2.4% lower risk for fathers (total n deaths = 97,630). On average, the parents of offspring in the upper third of the polygenic score distribution lived 0.55 y longer compared with those of offspring in the lower third. Overall, these results indicate that the genetic contributions to educational attainment are useful in the prediction of human longevity.genetics | education | longevity | prediction | polygenic score

Social determinants of health and the International Monetary Fund

“…Existing observational studies, however, are likely to be confounded by unobserved factors, such as genetic (12) or other unobserved behavioral and familial factors, that affect both parental education and child health. The presence of such confounding in observational studies was recently demonstrated in a large cross-comparative study showing the similarity in the effect size of paternal and maternal education on child malnutrition (4).…”

Gene–environment correlations in parental emotional warmth and intolerance: genome‐wide analysis over two generations of the Young Finns Study

“…The exact strength of the correlation between genetically influenced characteristics of children and the parenting they experience, however, is still uncertain due to the sometimes problematic assumptions of twin studies, while candidate gene studies are limited to examining a narrow range of genes and often have the limitation that they do not replicate in other samples. An increasing number of studies have used genes of children to explain a phenotype in their parents (Joshi et al., ; Marioni et al., ), and molecular genetic evidence is needed to estimate the proportion of the variance the rGEs explain of the parental responses. This can be done by utilizing genome‐wide complex trait analysis with restricted maximum likelihood (GCTA‐GREML; Yang, Lee, Goddard, & Visscher, ; Yang, Lee, Wray, Goddard, & Visscher, ), indicating whether two unrelated individuals are more similar in the parenting they experience because they share the same genes.…”

Mortality Selection in a Genetic Sample and Implications for Association Studies

“…This finding, that mortality selection may lead to attenuation, has also been observed in the context of Mendelian randomization. 5,6 If certain genetic profiles are associated with increased risks for mortality, 38,39 then individuals with such genotypes are less likely to be observed in older samples (e.g. Figure 4).…”