An atlas of genetic correlations across human diseases and traits.

Nat Genet
Authors
Keywords
Abstract

Identifying genetic correlations between complex traits and diseases can provide useful etiological insights and help prioritize likely causal relationships. The major challenges preventing estimation of genetic correlation from genome-wide association study (GWAS) data with current methods are the lack of availability of individual-level genotype data and widespread sample overlap among meta-analyses. We circumvent these difficulties by introducing a technique-cross-trait LD Score regression-for estimating genetic correlation that requires only GWAS summary statistics and is not biased by sample overlap. We use this method to estimate 276 genetic correlations among 24 traits. The results include genetic correlations between anorexia nervosa and schizophrenia, anorexia and obesity, and educational attainment and several diseases. These results highlight the power of genome-wide analyses, as there currently are no significantly associated SNPs for anorexia nervosa and only three for educational attainment.

Year of Publication
2015
Journal
Nat Genet
Volume
47
Issue
11
Pages
1236-41
Date Published
2015 Nov
ISSN
1546-1718
URL
DOI
10.1038/ng.3406
PubMed ID
26414676
PubMed Central ID
PMC4797329
Links
Grant list
082604/2/07/Z / Wellcome Trust / United Kingdom
N01AG12100 / AG / NIA NIH HHS / United States
503480 / Medical Research Council / United Kingdom
R03 CA173785 / CA / NCI NIH HHS / United States
U24 AG021886 / AG / NIA NIH HHS / United States
U01 AG032984 / AG / NIA NIH HHS / United States
R01 HG006399 / HG / NHGRI NIH HHS / United States
U01 AG016976 / AG / NIA NIH HHS / United States
R01 HL105756 / HL / NHLBI NIH HHS / United States
MC_UU_12015/2 / Medical Research Council / United Kingdom
MC_U106179472 / Medical Research Council / United Kingdom
R01 AG033193 / AG / NIA NIH HHS / United States
T32 MH076694 / MH / NIMH NIH HHS / United States
AG081220 / AG / NIA NIH HHS / United States
R01 MH101244 / MH / NIMH NIH HHS / United States