Polygenic risk for autism spectrum disorder associates with anger recognition in a neurodevelopment-focused phenome-wide scan of unaffected youths from a population-based cohort

Autor(es)

Wendt, Frank R. ; Carvalho, Carolina Muniz ; Pathak, Gita A. ; Gelernter, Joel ; Polimanti, Renato

• Tipo de documento: Artigo Científico
• Fonte: PLOS GENETICS; v. 16, n. 9, p. 16-pg., 2020-09-01.

Resumo

Author summary Large-scale genetic studies have identified many regions of the genome associated with autism spectrum disorder that are considered common in the general population. We investigated how the additive effects of these genetic variations associate with neurodevelopment in youths who lack an ASD diagnosis to better understand how genetic risk for ASD may contribute to other aspects of mental health. We uncovered a relationship between greater genetic risk for ASD and more accurate recognition of angry emotions in others, which persists after considering genetic associations with other psychiatric disorders, educational attainment, and brain region volume. This finding is consistent with existing theories of the relationship between ASD genetic liability and a person's ability to build generalizable and impulse driven models for responding to social phenomena. The polygenic nature and the contribution of common genetic variation to autism spectrum disorder (ASD) allude to a high degree of pleiotropy between ASD and other psychiatric and behavioral traits. In a pleiotropic system, a single genetic variant contributes small effects to several phenotypes or disorders. While analyzed broadly, there is a paucity of research studies investigating the shared genetic information between specific neurodevelopmental domains and ASD. We performed a phenome-wide association study of ASD polygenetic risk score (PRS) against 491 neurodevelopmental subdomains ascertained in 4,309 probands from the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort (PNC) who lack an ASD diagnosis. Our main analysis calculated ASD PRS in 4,309 PNC probands using the per-SNP effects reported in a recent genome-wide association studies of ASD in a case-control design. In a high-resolution manner, our main analysis regressed ASD PRS against 491 neurodevelopmental phenotypes with age, sex, and ten principal components of ancestry as covariates. Follow-up analyses included in the regression model PRS derived from brain-related traits genetically correlated with ASD. Our main finding demonstrated that 11-17-year old probands with the highest ASD genetic risk were able to identify angry faces (R-2= 1.06%, p = 1.38 x 10(-7), p(Bonferroni-corrected)= 1.9 x 10(-3)). This ability replicated in older probands (>18 years; R-2= 0.55%, p = 0.036) and persisted after covarying with other psychiatric disorders, brain imaging traits, and educational attainment (R-2= 0.2%, p = 0.019). We also detected several suggestive associations between ASD PRS and emotionality and connectedness with others. These data (i) indicate how genetic liability to ASD may influence neurodevelopment in the general population, (ii) reinforce epidemiological findings of heightened ability of ASD cases to predict certain social psychological events based on increased systemizing skills (iii) recapitulate theories of imbalance between empathizing and systemizing in ASD etiology. (AU)

• Processo FAPESP: 18/05995-4 - Investigação causal dos traços antropométricos sobre o risco de desenvolver transtorno do estresse pós-traumático em mulheres
• Beneficiário: Carolina Muniz Felix de Carvalho
• Modalidade de apoio: Bolsas no Exterior - Estágio de Pesquisa - Doutorado