ArticleNature communications2021
Genome-wide analyses of behavioural traits are subject to bias by misreports and longitudinal changes.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 44 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
44 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Multi-ancestry GWAS meta-analyses of lung cancer reveal susceptibility loci and elucidate smoking-independent genetic risk.Nature communications · 2024Pooled it
- Phenotypic and genetic analysis of a wellbeing factor score in the UK Biobank and the impact of childhood maltreatment and psychiatric illness.Translational psychiatry · 2022Pooled it
- Genome-wide study of DNA methylation shows alterations in metabolic, inflammatory, and cholesterol pathways in ALS.Science translational medicine · 2022Pooled it
- Transcriptional mechanisms of sex-biased gene expression and their connections to disease-associated variation.Human molecular genetics · 2026Article
- The association between obstructive sleep apnea and frailty traits: a bidirectional Mendelian randomization study.BMC pulmonary medicine · 2026Article
- The predicament of heritable confounders.Nature genetics · 2026Review
- Review
- Proteomic prediction of disease largely reflects environmental risk exposure.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Leveraging Genomic Data to Examine the Causal Impact of Alcohol, Tobacco, Cannabis, and Opioid Use on Biological and Cognitive Ageing.Addiction biology · 2025Article
- Assessment and ascertainment in psychiatric molecular genetics: challenges and opportunities for cross-disorder research.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Review
- Integrating the environmental and genetic architectures of aging and mortality.Nature medicine · 2025Article
- Enhancing mitochondrial one-carbon metabolism is neuroprotective in Alzheimer's disease models.Cell death & disease · 2024Article
- The Association between Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Venous Thromboembolism: A Bidirectional Two-Sample Mendelian Randomization Study.Thrombosis and haemostasis · 2024Article
- Refining the scope of genetic influences on alcohol misuse through environmental stratification and gene-environment interaction.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2024Article
- Machine learning reveals heterogeneous associations between environmental factors and cardiometabolic diseases across polygenic risk scores.Communications medicine · 2024Article
- The genetic architecture of biological age in nine human organ systems.Nature aging · 2024Article
- The Genetic Architecture of Biological Age in Nine Human Organ Systems.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- A phenome-wide association and Mendelian randomisation study of alcohol use variants in a diverse cohort comprising over 3 million individuals.EBioMedicine · 2024Article
- Assessing the Role of Cortisol in Anxiety, Major Depression, and Neuroticism: A Mendelian Randomization Study UsingBiological psychiatry global open science · 2024Article
- Unravelling the complex causal effects of substance use behaviours on common diseases.Communications medicine · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have discovered numerous genetic variants associated with human behavioural traits. However, behavioural traits are subject to misreports and longitudinal changes (MLC) which can cause biases in GWAS and follow-up analyses. Here, we demonstrate that individuals with higher disease burden in the UK Biobank (n = 455,607) are more likely to misreport or reduce their alcohol consumption levels, and propose a correction procedure to mitigate the MLC-induced biases. The alcohol consumption GWAS signals removed by the MLC corrections are enriched in metabolic/cardiovascular traits. Almost all the previously reported negative estimates of genetic correlations between alcohol consumption and common diseases become positive/non-significant after the MLC corrections. We also observe MLC biases for smoking and physical activities in the UK Biobank. Our findings provide a plausible explanation of the controversy about the effects of alcohol consumption on health outcomes and a caution for future analyses of self-reported behavioural traits in biobank data.
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