Unraveling genetic risk contributions to nonverbal status in autism spectrum disorder probands

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) presents a wide range of cognitive and language impairments. In this study, we investigated the genetic basis of non-verbal status in ASD using a comprehensive genomic approach. We identified a novel common variant, rs1944180 in CNTN5, significantly associated with non-verbal status through family-based Transmission Disequilibrium Testing. Polygenic risk score (PRS) analysis further showed that higher ASD PRS was significantly linked to non-verbal status (p = 0.034), specific to ASD and not related to other conditions such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and three language-related traits. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), we found two causal SNPs, rs1247761 located in KCNMA1 and rs2524290 in RAB3IL1, linking ASD with language traits. The model indicated a unidirectional effect, with ASD driving language impairments. Additionally, de novo mutations (DNMs) were found to be related with ASD and interaction between common variants and DNMs significantly impacted non-verbal status (p = 0.038). Our findings also identified 5 high-risk ASD genes, and DNMs were enriched in glycosylation-related pathways. These results offer new insights into the genetic mechanisms underlying language deficits in ASD.