TY - JOUR T1 - An epigenome-wide association study of educational attainment (<em>n</em> = 10,767) JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/114637 SP - 114637 AU - Richard Karlsson Linnér AU - Riccardo E Marioni AU - Cornelius A Rietveld AU - Andrew Simpkin AU - Neil M Davies AU - Kyoko Watanabe AU - Nicola J Armstrong AU - Kirsi Auro AU - Clemens Baumbach AU - Marc Jan Bonder AU - Jadwiga Buchwald AU - Giovanni Fiorito AU - Khadeeja Ismail AU - Stella Iurato AU - Anni Joensuu AU - Pauliina Karell AU - Silva Kasela AU - Jari Lahti AU - Allan F McRae AU - Pooja R Mandaviya AU - Ilkka Seppälä AU - Yunzhang Wang AU - Laura Baglietto AU - Elisabeth B Binder AU - Sarah E Harris AU - Allison M Hodge AU - Steve Horvath AU - Mikko Hurme AU - Magnus Johannesson AU - Antti Latvala AU - Karen A Mather AU - Sarah E Medland AU - Andres Metspalu AU - Lili Milani AU - Roger L Milne AU - Alison Pattie AU - Nancy L Pedersen AU - Annette Peters AU - Silvia Polidoro AU - Katri Räikkönen AU - Gianluca Severi AU - John M Starr AU - Lisette Stolk AU - Melanie Waldenberger AU - BIOS Consortium AU - Johan G Eriksson AU - Tõnu Esko AU - Lude Franke AU - Christian Gieger AU - Graham G Giles AU - Sara Hägg AU - Pekka Jousilahti AU - Jaakko Kaprio AU - Mika Kähönen AU - Terho Lehtimäki AU - Nicholas G Martin AU - Joyce B. C van Meurs AU - Miina Ollikainen AU - Markus Perola AU - Danielle Posthuma AU - Olli T Raitakari AU - Perminder S Sachdev AU - Erdogan Taskesen AU - André G Uitterlinden AU - Paolo Vineis AU - Cisca Wijmenga AU - Margaret J Wright AU - Caroline Relton AU - George Davey Smith AU - Ian J Deary AU - Philipp D Koellinger AU - Daniel J Benjamin Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/03/07/114637.abstract N2 - The epigenome has been shown to be influenced by biological factors, such as disease status, and environmental factors, such as smoking, alcohol consumption, and body mass index. Although there is a widespread perception that environmental influences on the epigenome are pervasive and profound, there has been little evidence to date in humans with respect to environmental factors that are biologically distal. Here, we provide evidence on the associations between epigenetic modifications—in our case, CpG methylation—and educational attainment (EA), a biologically distal environmental factor that is arguably among of the most important life-shaping experiences for individuals. Specifically, we report the results of an epigenome-wide association study meta-analysis of EA based on data from 27 cohort studies with a total of 10,767 individuals. While we find that 9 CpG probes are significantly associated with EA, only two remain associated when we restrict the sample to never-smokers. These two are known to be strongly associated with maternal smoking during pregnancy, and thus their association with EA could be due to correlation between EA and maternal smoking. Moreover, their effect sizes on EA are far smaller than the known associations between CpG probes and biologically proximal environmental factors. Two analyses that combine the effects of many probes—polygenic methylation score and epigenetic-clock analyses—both suggest small associations with EA. If our findings regarding EA can be generalized to other biologically distal environmental factors, then they cast doubt on the hypothesis that such factors have large effects on the epigenome. ER -