Polygenic prediction of the phenome, across ancestry, in emerging adulthood.
Docherty, A. R., Moscati, A., Dick, D., Savage, J., Salvatore, J., Cooke, M., Edwards,
A. C., Adkins, D. E., Moore, A., Aliev, F., Webb, B. T., Bacanu, S. A. Kendler, K.
S. (2018). “Polygenic prediction of the phenome, across ancestry, in emerging adulthood.”
Psychological Medicine, (In press).
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291717003312
BACKGROUND:
Identifying genetic relationships between complex traits in emerging adulthood can
provide useful etiological insights into risk for psychopathology. College-age individuals
are under-represented in genomic analyses thus far, and the majority of work has focused
on the clinical disorder or cognitive abilities rather than normal-range behavioral
outcomes.
METHODS:
This study examined a sample of emerging adults 18-22 years of age (N = 5947) to construct
an atlas of polygenic risk for 33 traits predicting relevant phenotypic outcomes.
Twenty-eight hypotheses were tested based on the previous literature on samples of
European ancestry, and the availability of rich assessment data allowed for polygenic
predictions across 55 psychological and medical phenotypes.
RESULTS:
Polygenic risk for schizophrenia (SZ) in emerging adults predicted anxiety, depression,
nicotine use, trauma, and family history of psychological disorders. Polygenic risk
for neuroticism predicted anxiety, depression, phobia, panic, neuroticism, and was
correlated with polygenic risk for cardiovascular disease.
CONCLUSIONS:
These results demonstrate the extensive impact of genetic risk for SZ, neuroticism,
and major depression on a range of health outcomes in early adulthood. Minimal cross-ancestry
replication of these phenomic patterns of polygenic influence underscores the need
for more genome-wide association studies of non-European populations.