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Moderate Prenatal Alcohol Exposure and Quantification of Social Behavior in Adult Rats
Published on: December 14, 2014
Educational Attainment Polygenic Scores: Examining Evidence for Gene-Environment Interplay with Adolescent Alcohol,
Christal N Davis1, Ian R Gizer1, Lucía Colodro-Conde2
1Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO65211, USA.
Abstract:
Genes associated with educational attainment may be related to or interact with adolescent alcohol, tobacco and cannabis use. Potential gene-environment interplay between educational attainment polygenic scores (EA-PGS) and adolescent alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis use was evaluated with a series of regression models fitted to data from a sample of 1871 adult Australian twins. All models controlled for age, age2, cohort, sex and genetic ancestry as fixed effects, and a genetic relatedness matrix was included as a random effect. Although there was no evidence that adolescent alcohol, tobacco or cannabis use interacted with EA-PGS to influence educational attainment, there was a significant, positive gene-environment correlation with adolescent alcohol use at all PGS thresholds (ps <.02). Higher EA-PGS were associated with an increased likelihood of using alcohol as an adolescent (ΔR2 ranged from 0.5% to 1.1%). The positive gene-environment correlation suggests a complex relationship between educational attainment and alcohol use that is due to common genetic factors.
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