ArticleNature genetics2021
Genetic analyses identify widespread sex-differential participation bias.
Article in Nature genetics, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 154 papers, 7 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
154 citing papers in PubMed, 7 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 260 citations in OpenAlex.
- Inflammatory cytokines are associated with stroke and risk factors of cerebrovascular diseases: a Mendelian randomization study.Mammalian genome : official journal of the International Mammalian Genome Society · 2025Pooled it
- Large-scale genome-wide analyses of stuttering.Nature genetics · 2025Pooled it
- The impact of assortative mating, participation bias and socioeconomic status on the polygenic risk of behavioural and psychiatric traits.Nature human behaviour · 2024Pooled it
- Better together against genetic heterogeneity: A sex-combined joint main and interaction analysis of 290 quantitative traits in the UK Biobank.PLoS genetics · 2024Pooled it
- Implicating genes, pleiotropy, and sexual dimorphism at blood lipid loci through multi-ancestry meta-analysis.Genome biology · 2022Pooled it
- Ancestry- and sex-specific effects underlying inguinal hernia susceptibility identified in a multiethnic genome-wide association study meta-analysis.Human molecular genetics · 2022Pooled it
- Genome-wide meta-analysis of muscle weakness identifies 15 susceptibility loci in older men and women.Nature communications · 2021Pooled it
- Assessing Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium in T2T-aligned 1000 genomes project.PLoS genetics · 2026Article
- Genetic predisposition to longer lifespan, lifestyle factors, and all-cause mortality: a 17-year prospective cohort study.GeroScience · 2026Article
- Obesity-related RNA mJournal of neural transmission (Vienna, Austria : 1996) · 2026Article
- Causal inference in psychiatric research: how to critically evaluate and interpret mendelian randomization studies.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Review
- Genome-wide association study identifies protective genetic factors in active blood donors against multiple diseases.European journal of human genetics : EJHG · 2026Article
- Large-scale analysis of FMR1 CGG repeat length and risk of premature ovarian insufficiency in over 92 000 women.Human reproduction (Oxford, England) · 2026Article
- Challenges and future directions for Mendelian randomization.Nature genetics · 2026Review
- Widespread and Biologically Driven Sex Disparities in Polygenic Risk Prediction Across Complex Traits.Research square · 2026Article
- Food preferences and mortality risk in the prospective cohort of UK Biobank participants.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- UK BioCoin: swift trait-specific summary statistics regression for UK Biobank.Nature communications · 2026Article
- The inactive X chromosome as a female protector in autism and beyond.Nature genetics · 2026Review
- The predicament of heritable confounders.Nature genetics · 2026Review
- Drivers of systemic male-female allele frequency divergence in humans.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
94 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
32 authors at 14 institutions in 8 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Genetic association results are often interpreted with the assumption that study participation does not affect downstream analyses. Understanding the genetic basis of participation bias is challenging since it requires the genotypes of unseen individuals. Here we demonstrate that it is possible to estimate comparative biases by performing a genome-wide association study contrasting one subgroup versus another. For example, we showed that sex exhibits artifactual autosomal heritability in the presence of sex-differential participation bias. By performing a genome-wide association study of sex in approximately 3.3 million males and females, we identified over 158 autosomal loci spuriously associated with sex and highlighted complex traits underpinning differences in study participation between the sexes. For example, the body mass index-increasing allele at FTO was observed at higher frequency in males compared to females (odds ratio = 1.02, P = 4.4 × 10
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.