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bioRxiv · 10.1101/118810

MTAG: Multi-Trait Analysis of GWAS

Turley, P.·Walters, R. K.·Maghzian, O.·Okbay, A.·Lee, J. J.·Fontana, M. A.·Nguyen-Viet, T. A.·Furlotte, N. A.·23andMe Research Team,·Social Science Genetic Association Consortium,·Magnusson, P.·Oskarsson, S.·Johannesson, M.·Visscher, P. M.·Laibson, D.·Cesarini, D.·Neale, B.·Benjamin, D. J.
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Abstract

We introduce Multi-Trait Analysis of GWAS (MTAG), a method for joint analysis of summary statistics from GWASs of different traits, possibly from overlapping samples. We apply MTAG to summary statistics for depressive symptoms (Neff = 354,862), neuroticism (N = 168,105), and subjective well-being (N = 388,538). Compared to 32, 9, and 13 genome-wide significant loci in the single-trait GWASs (most of which are themselves novel), MTAG increases the number of loci to 64, 37, and 49, respectively. Moreover, association statistics from MTAG yield more informative bioinformatics analyses and increase variance explained by polygenic scores by approximately 25%, matching theoretical expectations.

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Turley, P., Walters, R. K., Maghzian, O., Okbay, A., Lee, J. J., Fontana, M. A., Nguyen-Viet, T. A., Furlotte, N. A., 23andMe Research Team,, Social Science Genetic Association Consortium,, Magnusson, P., Oskarsson, S., Johannesson, M., Visscher, P. M., Laibson, D., Cesarini, D., Neale, B., Benjamin, D. J.. 2017-03-20. MTAG: Multi-Trait Analysis of GWAS. https://doi.org/10.1101/118810

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