Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Rietveld, Cornelius A.
• Conley, Dalton
• Eriksson, Nicholas
• Esko, Tõnu
• Medland, Sarah E.
• Vinkhuyzen, Anna A. E.
• Yang, Jian
• Boardman, Jason D.
• Chabris, Christopher F.
• Dawes, Christopher T.
• Domingue, Benjamin W.
• Hinds, David A.
• Johannesson, Magnus
• Kiefer, Amy K.
• Laibson, David
• Magnusson, Patrik K. E.
• Mountain, Joanna L.
• Oskarsson, Sven
• Rostapshova, Olga
• Teumer, Alexander
• Tung, Joyce Y.
• Visscher, Peter M.
• Benjamin, Daniel J.
• Cesarini, David
• Koellinger, Philipp D.

Titel

Replicability and Robustness of Genome-Wide-Association Studies for Behavioral Traits

Ist Teil von

• Psychological science, 2014-11, Vol.25 (11), p.1975-1986

Ort / Verlag

Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2014

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• A recent genome-wide-association study of educational attainment identified three single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) whose associations, despite their small effect sizes (each R² ≈ 0.02%), reached genome-wide significance (p < 5 × 10⁻⁸) in a large discovery sample and were replicated in an independent sample (p < .05). The study also reported associations between educational attainment and indices of SNPs called "polygenic scores." In three studies, we evaluated the robustness of these findings. Study 1 showed that the associations with all three SNPs were replicated in another large (N = 34,428) independent sample. We also found that the scores remained predictive (R² ≈ 2%) in regressions with stringent controls for stratification (Study 2) and in new within-family analyses (Study 3). Our results show that large and therefore well-powered genome-wide-association studies can identify replicable genetic associations with behavioral traits. The small effect sizes of individual SNPs are likely to be a major contributing factor explaining the striking contrast between our results and the disappointing replication record of most candidate-gene studies.