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National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 47(113), p. 13366-13371, 2016

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1605334113

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Genetic variants linked to education predict longevity

Journal article published in 2016 by Peter K. Joshi, Guo-Bo Chen181, Ritchie Sj, Marioni Re, Re E. (Riccardo) Marioni, Sj J. (Stuart J.) Ritchie, Kristi Läll, James F. Wilson, A. (Aysu) Okbay, S. (Saskia) P P. Hagenaars, Patrick Turley, K. (Krista) Fischer, Aysu Okbay, Wd D. (W David) Hill, Joshi Pk and other authors.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

Educational attainment is associated with many health outcomes, including longevity. It is also known to be substantially heritable. Here, we used data from three large genetic epidemiology cohort studies (Generation Scotland, n = approximately 17,000; UK Biobank, n = approximately 115,000; and the Estonian Biobank, n = approximately 6,000) to test whether education-linked genetic variants can predict lifespan length. We did so by using cohort members' polygenic profile score for education to predict their parents' longevity. Across the three cohorts, meta-analysis showed that a 1 SD higher polygenic education score was associated with approximately 2.7% lower mortality risk for both mothers (total ndeaths = 79,702) and approximately 2.4% lower risk for fathers (total ndeaths = 97,630). On average, the parents of offspring in the upper third of the polygenic score distribution lived 0.55 y longer compared with those of offspring in the lower third. Overall, these results indicate that the genetic contributions to educational attainment are useful in the prediction of human longevity.