Disentangling polygenic associations between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, educational attainment, literacy and language

Verhoef, Ellen, Demontis, Ditte, Burgess, Stephen, Shapland, Chin Yang, Dale, Philip S., Okbay, Aysu, Neale, Benjamin M., Faraone, Stephen V., Stergiakouli, Evie, Davey Smith, George, Fisher, Simon E., Børglum, Anders D., St Pourcain, Beate, iPSYCH-Broad-PGC, ADHD Consortium and Martin, Joanna ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8911-3479 2019. Disentangling polygenic associations between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, educational attainment, literacy and language. Translational Psychiatry 9 , 35. 10.1038/s41398-018-0324-2

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Abstract

Interpreting polygenic overlap between ADHD and both literacy-related and language-related impairments is challenging as genetic associations might be influenced by indirectly shared genetic factors. Here, we investigate genetic overlap between polygenic ADHD risk and multiple literacy-related and/or language-related abilities (LRAs), as assessed in UK children (N ≤ 5919), accounting for genetically predictable educational attainment (EA). Genome-wide summary statistics on clinical ADHD and years of schooling were obtained from large consortia (N ≤ 326,041). Our findings show that ADHD-polygenic scores (ADHD-PGS) were inversely associated with LRAs in ALSPAC, most consistently with reading-related abilities, and explained ≤1.6% phenotypic variation. These polygenic links were then dissected into both ADHD effects shared with and independent of EA, using multivariable regressions (MVR). Conditional on EA, polygenic ADHD risk remained associated with multiple reading and/or spelling abilities, phonemic awareness and verbal intelligence, but not listening comprehension and non-word repetition. Using conservative ADHD-instruments (P-threshold < 5 × 10−8), this corresponded, for example, to a 0.35 SD decrease in pooled reading performance per log-odds in ADHD-liability (P = 9.2 × 10−5). Using subthreshold ADHD-instruments (P-threshold < 0.0015), these effects became smaller, with a 0.03 SD decrease per log-odds in ADHD risk (P = 1.4 × 10−6), although the predictive accuracy increased. However, polygenic ADHD-effects shared with EA were of equal strength and at least equal magnitude compared to those independent of EA, for all LRAs studied, and detectable using subthreshold instruments. Thus, ADHD-related polygenic links with LRAs are to a large extent due to shared genetic effects with EA, although there is evidence for an ADHD-specific association profile, independent of EA, that primarily involves literacyrelated impairments

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Medicine MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics (CNGG)
Additional Information:	Joanna Martin is a member of the iPSYCH-Broad-PGC ADHD Consortium Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Publisher:	Springer Nature
ISSN:	2158-3188
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	1 March 2019
Date of Acceptance:	13 November 2018
Last Modified:	10 Jun 2023 22:10
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/120123

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