TY - JOUR
T1 - Genetic contributions to health literacy
AU - Fawns-Ritchie, Chloe
AU - Davies, Gail
AU - Hagenaars, Saskia P.
AU - Deary, Ian J.
N1 - Funding Information:
The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing is jointly run by University College London, Institute for Fiscal Studies, University of Manchester and National Centre for Social Research. Genetic analyses have been carried out by UCL Genomics and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the National Institute on Aging. All GWAS data have been deposited in the European Genome-Phenome Archive. Data governance was provided by the METADAC data access committee, funded by ESRC, Wellcome and MRC. (2015-2018: Grant Number MR/N01104X/1 2018- 2020: Grant Number ES/S008349/1). The present study was supported by the University of Edinburgh Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, part of the cross council Lifelong Health and Wellbeing Initiative, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), and Medical Research Council (MRC) (grant number MR/K026992/1). The Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 is funded by Age UK (Disconnected Mind grant). SPH is funded by the Medical Research Council (MR/S0151132). This study presents independent research part supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King's College London. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, NIHR, Department of Health or King's College London.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2019 This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence.
PY - 2019/6
Y1 - 2019/6
N2 - Higher health literacy is associated with higher cognitive function and better health. Despite its wide use in medical research, no study has investigated the genetic contributions to health literacy. Using 5783 English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) participants (mean age = 65.49, SD = 9.55) who had genotyping data and had completed a health literacy test at wave 2 (2004-2005), we carried out a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of health literacy. We estimated the proportion of variance in health literacy explained by all common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Polygenic profile scores were calculated using summary statistics from GWAS of 21 cognitive and health measures. Logistic regression was used to test whether polygenic scores for cognitive and health-related traits were associated with having adequate, compared to limited, health literacy. No SNPs achieved genome-wide significance for association with health literacy. The proportion of variance in health literacy accounted for by common SNPs was 8.5% (SE = 7.2%). Greater odds of having adequate health literacy were associated with a 1 standard deviation higher polygenic score for general cognitive ability [OR = 1.34, 95% CI (1.26, 1.42)], verbal-numerical reasoning [OR = 1.30, 95% CI (1.23, 1.39)], and years of schooling [OR = 1.29, 95% CI (1.21, 1.36)]. Reduced odds of having adequate health literacy were associated with higher polygenic profiles for poorer self-rated health [OR = 0.92, 95% CI (0.87, 0.98)] and schizophrenia [OR = 0.91, 95% CI (0.85, 0.96)). The well-documented associations between health literacy, cognitive function and health may partly be due to shared genetic etiology. Larger studies are required to obtain accurate estimates of SNP-based heritability and to discover specific health literacy-associated genetic variants.
AB - Higher health literacy is associated with higher cognitive function and better health. Despite its wide use in medical research, no study has investigated the genetic contributions to health literacy. Using 5783 English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) participants (mean age = 65.49, SD = 9.55) who had genotyping data and had completed a health literacy test at wave 2 (2004-2005), we carried out a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of health literacy. We estimated the proportion of variance in health literacy explained by all common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Polygenic profile scores were calculated using summary statistics from GWAS of 21 cognitive and health measures. Logistic regression was used to test whether polygenic scores for cognitive and health-related traits were associated with having adequate, compared to limited, health literacy. No SNPs achieved genome-wide significance for association with health literacy. The proportion of variance in health literacy accounted for by common SNPs was 8.5% (SE = 7.2%). Greater odds of having adequate health literacy were associated with a 1 standard deviation higher polygenic score for general cognitive ability [OR = 1.34, 95% CI (1.26, 1.42)], verbal-numerical reasoning [OR = 1.30, 95% CI (1.23, 1.39)], and years of schooling [OR = 1.29, 95% CI (1.21, 1.36)]. Reduced odds of having adequate health literacy were associated with higher polygenic profiles for poorer self-rated health [OR = 0.92, 95% CI (0.87, 0.98)] and schizophrenia [OR = 0.91, 95% CI (0.85, 0.96)). The well-documented associations between health literacy, cognitive function and health may partly be due to shared genetic etiology. Larger studies are required to obtain accurate estimates of SNP-based heritability and to discover specific health literacy-associated genetic variants.
KW - education
KW - genetic
KW - genome-wide association study
KW - health
KW - Health literacy
KW - intelligence
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85068219662&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/thg.2019.28
DO - 10.1017/thg.2019.28
M3 - Article
C2 - 31250787
AN - SCOPUS:85068219662
SN - 1832-4274
VL - 22
SP - 131
EP - 139
JO - Twin Research and Human Genetics
JF - Twin Research and Human Genetics
IS - 3
ER -