ArticleMolecular psychiatry2016
Shared genetic aetiology between cognitive functions and physical and mental health in UK Biobank (N=112 151) and 24 GWAS consortia.
Article in Molecular psychiatry, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 214 papers, 11 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
214 citing papers in PubMed, 11 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Dissecting Schizophrenia Biology Using Pleiotropy With Cognitive Genomics.Biological psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Genome-wide association study in 404,302 individuals identifies 7 significant loci for reaction time variability.Molecular psychiatry · 2023Pooled it
- Genetics of early-life head circumference and genetic correlations with neurological, psychiatric and cognitive outcomes.BMC medical genomics · 2022Pooled it
- Genome-wide interaction study with major depression identifies novel variants associated with cognitive function.Molecular psychiatry · 2022Pooled it
- From Polygenic Scores to Precision Medicine in Alzheimer's Disease: A Systematic Review.Journal of Alzheimer's disease : JAD · 2020Pooled it
- Pleiotropic Meta-Analysis of Cognition, Education, and Schizophrenia Differentiates Roles of Early Neurodevelopmental and Adult Synaptic Pathways.American journal of human genetics · 2019Pooled it
- Cognitive Performance in First-Degree Relatives of Individuals With vs Without Major Depressive Disorder: A Meta-analysis.JAMA psychiatry · 2019Pooled it
- Meta-analysis of epigenome-wide association studies of cognitive abilities.Molecular psychiatry · 2018Pooled it
- Short telomere length is associated with impaired cognitive performance in European ancestry cohorts.Translational psychiatry · 2017Pooled it
- GWAS meta-analysis reveals novel loci and genetic correlates for general cognitive function: a report from the COGENT consortium.Molecular psychiatry · 2017Pooled it
- The association between cognitive function and subsequent depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Psychological medicine · 2017Pooled it
- Polygenic risk has an impact on the structural plasticity of hippocampal subfields during aerobic exercise combined with cognitive remediation in multi-episode schizophrenia.Translational psychiatry · 2017Trial
- Associations between polygenic risk for obesity, body mass index and cognitive performance: Age as moderating factor.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2026Article
- The genetic overlap between schizophrenia and major depression with cognitive function.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Parsing the Functional Heterogeneity of the Psychosis Spectrum: A Clinically Informed Application of Genomic Structural Equation Modeling.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Polygenic risk score for neurodevelopmental disorders and cognitive impairment at long-term follow-up of first-episode psychosis.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2026Article
- Depression and cognition: is there a bidirectional relationship?Aging & mental health · 2026Article
- Effect of ancestry and shared genetic architecture of serious mental illness on symptoms and cognition in an admixed Latin American population.Research square · 2026Article
- Splitting schizophrenia: divergent cognitive and educational outcomes revealed by genomic structural equation modelling.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- FOXP Transcription Factors in Thyroid Cancer: From Molecular Expression to Clinical Significance.Biomedicines · 2026Review
154 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
22 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Causes of the well-documented association between low levels of cognitive functioning and many adverse neuropsychiatric outcomes, poorer physical health and earlier death remain unknown. We used linkage disequilibrium regression and polygenic profile scoring to test for shared genetic aetiology between cognitive functions and neuropsychiatric disorders and physical health. Using information provided by many published genome-wide association study consortia, we created polygenic profile scores for 24 vascular-metabolic, neuropsychiatric, physiological-anthropometric and cognitive traits in the participants of UK Biobank, a very large population-based sample (N=112 151). Pleiotropy between cognitive and health traits was quantified by deriving genetic correlations using summary genome-wide association study statistics and to the method of linkage disequilibrium score regression. Substantial and significant genetic correlations were observed between cognitive test scores in the UK Biobank sample and many of the mental and physical health-related traits and disorders assessed here. In addition, highly significant associations were observed between the cognitive test scores in the UK Biobank sample and many polygenic profile scores, including coronary artery disease, stroke, Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, autism, major depressive disorder, body mass index, intracranial volume, infant head circumference and childhood cognitive ability. Where disease diagnosis was available for UK Biobank participants, we were able to show that these results were not confounded by those who had the relevant disease. These findings indicate that a substantial level of pleiotropy exists between cognitive abilities and many human mental and physical health disorders and traits and that it can be used to predict phenotypic variance across samples.
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