Shared genomic architectures of COVID-19 and antisocial behavior

Abstract

Little is known about the genetics of norm violation and aggression in relation to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). To investigate this, we used summary statistics from genome-wide association studies and linkage disequilibrium score regression to calculate a matrix of genetic correlations (rgs) for antisocial behavior (ASB), COVID-19, and various health and behavioral traits. After false-discovery rate correction, ASB was genetically correlated with COVID-19 (rg = 0.51; P = 1.54E-02) and 19 other traits. ASB and COVID-19 were both positively genetically correlated with having a noisy workplace, doing heavy manual labor, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and genitourinary diseases. ASB and COVID-19 were both inversely genetically correlated with average income, education years, healthspan, verbal reasoning, lifespan, cheese intake, and being breastfed as a baby. But keep in mind that rgs are not necessarily causal. And, if causal, their prevailing directions of effect (which causes which) are indiscernible from rgs alone. Moreover, the SNP-heritability ($$h_g^2$$ h g 2 ) estimates for two measures of COVID-19 were very small, restricting the overlap of genetic variance in absolute terms between ASB and COVID-19. Nonetheless, our findings suggest that those with antisocial tendencies possibly have a higher risk of exposure to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) than those without antisocial tendencies. This may have been especially true early in the pandemic before vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 were available and before the emergence of the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

Genome‐wide DNA methylation analysis of aggressive behaviour: a longitudinal population‐based study

“…We next examined whether methylation quantitative trait locus (mQTL) SNPs associated with our LHA‐associated methylation sites colocalized with risk genes reported in GWAS studies performed on a number of LHA‐related traits including general cognitive function (Davies et al., 2015) educational attainment (Adams, Tielbeek, Boutwell, & Broad Antisocial Behavior, 2022), risk‐taking behaviour (Fernandez‐Castillo, Cabana‐Dominguez, Corominas, & Cormand, 2022), volume of the nucleus caudatus (Satizabal et al., 2019), volume of the putamen (Luo et al., 2022) and subjective well‐being (Zhou et al., 2017). We obtained cis mQTLs associated with the top DMPs from the Genetics of DNA Methylation Consortium (goDMC) (Min et al., 2021).…”