RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Genome-wide association study of school grades identifies a genetic overlap between language ability, psychopathology and creativity
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.05.09.075226
DO 10.1101/2020.05.09.075226
A1 Veera M. Rajagopal
A1 Andrea Ganna
A1 Jonathan R. I. Coleman
A1 Andrea G. Allegrini
A1 Georgios Voloudakis
A1 Jakob Grove
A1 Thomas D. Als
A1 Henriette T. Horsdal
A1 Liselotte Petersen
A1 Vivek Appadurai
A1 Andrew Schork
A1 Alfonso Buil
A1 Cynthia M. Bulik
A1 Jonas Bybjerg-Grauholm
A1 Marie Bækvad-Hansen
A1 David M. Hougaard
A1 Ole Mors
A1 Merete Nordentoft
A1 Thomas Werge
A1 iPSYCH-Broad Consortium
A1 Preben Bo Mortensen
A1 Gerome Breen
A1 Panos Roussos
A1 Robert Plomin
A1 Esben Agerbo
A1 Anders D. Børglum
A1 Ditte Demontis
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/05/12/2020.05.09.075226.abstract
AB Individuals with psychiatric disorders perform differently in school compared to the general population. Genetic factors contribute substantially to such differences. It is however unclear if differential performance is seen across all cognitive domains such as math and language. Here we report a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of school grades in 30,982 individuals (18,495 with and 12,487 without one or more of six major psychiatric disorders) and a replication study in 4,547 individuals. GWAS of overall school performance yielded results that were highly similar to the results of a previous GWAS of educational attainment. Analyzing subject specific grades, we observed that math performance was severely affected whereas language performance (Danish and English) was relatively unaffected or enhanced in those with psychiatric disorders compared to controls. We found that the genetic variants associated with poor math performance, but better language performance were also associated with increased risk for multiple psychiatric disorders. The same variants were also associated with creativity, which we show through a polygenic score analysis of 2953 creative professionals and 164,622 controls. The results overall suggest that risk for psychiatric disorders, language ability and creativity might have overlapping genetic roots.Competing Interest StatementCM Bulik reports: Shire (grant recipient, Scientific Advisory Board member); Idorsia (consultant); Pearson (author, royalty recipient).