TY - JOUR
T1 - What can genes tell us about the relationship between education and health?
AU - Boardman, Jason D.
AU - Domingue, Benjamin W.
AU - Daw, Jonathan
N1 - Funding Information:
This paper uses data from the Health and Retirement Study which is supported by National Institutes of Aging (U01 AG009740) and the Social Security Administration. The analyses for this paper were supported by grants from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) including R21 HD078031 ; R01 HD060726 . Further support was provided by the NIH/NICHD funded University of Colorado Population Center ( R24 HD066613 ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Elsevier Ltd.
PY - 2015/2/1
Y1 - 2015/2/1
N2 - We use genome wide data from respondents of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to evaluate the possibility that common genetic influences are associated with education and three health outcomes: depression, self-rated health, and body mass index. We use a total of 1.7 million single nucleotide polymorphisms obtained from the Illumina HumanOmni2.5-4v1 chip from 4233 non-Hispanic white respondents to characterize genetic similarities among unrelated persons in the HRS. We then used the Genome Wide Complex Trait Analysis (GCTA) toolkit, to estimate univariate and bivariate heritability. We provide evidence that education (h2=0.33), BMI (h2=0.43), depression (h2=0.19), and self-rated health (h2=0.18) are all moderately heritable phenotypes. We also provide evidence that some of the correlation between depression and education as well as self-rated health and education is due to common genetic factors associated with one or both traits. We find no evidence that the correlation between education and BMI is influenced by common genetic factors.
AB - We use genome wide data from respondents of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to evaluate the possibility that common genetic influences are associated with education and three health outcomes: depression, self-rated health, and body mass index. We use a total of 1.7 million single nucleotide polymorphisms obtained from the Illumina HumanOmni2.5-4v1 chip from 4233 non-Hispanic white respondents to characterize genetic similarities among unrelated persons in the HRS. We then used the Genome Wide Complex Trait Analysis (GCTA) toolkit, to estimate univariate and bivariate heritability. We provide evidence that education (h2=0.33), BMI (h2=0.43), depression (h2=0.19), and self-rated health (h2=0.18) are all moderately heritable phenotypes. We also provide evidence that some of the correlation between depression and education as well as self-rated health and education is due to common genetic factors associated with one or both traits. We find no evidence that the correlation between education and BMI is influenced by common genetic factors.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.08.001
DO - 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.08.001
M3 - Article
C2 - 25113566
AN - SCOPUS:84922285128
SN - 0277-9536
VL - 127
SP - 171
EP - 180
JO - Social Science and Medicine
JF - Social Science and Medicine
ER -