Petersen, L. V. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2020

Association of educational attainment polygenic score with school grades in individuals with and without psychiatric disorders.

Suboptimal school performance is often seen in children with psychiatric disorders and is influenced by both genetics and the environment. Educational attainment polygenic score (EA-PGS) has been shown to significantly predict school performance in the general population. Here we analyze the association of EA-PGS with school performance in 18,495 children with and 12,487, without one or more of six psychiatric disorders and show that variance explained in the school performance by the EA-PGS is substantially lower in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Accounting for parents socioeconomic status obliterated the variance difference between ADHD-but not ASD-and controls. Given that a large proportion of the prediction performance of EA-PGS originate from family environment, our findings hint that family environmental influences on school performance might differ between ADHD and controls; studying the same further will open new avenues to improve the school performance of children with ADHD.

genetics↗

bioRxiv2020

Genome-wide association study of school grades identifies a genetic overlap between language ability, psychopathology and creativity

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.

genomics↗