Education-related polygenic scores show different associations with youth mental health in parent-offspring trios

Educational attainment and mental health are associated from childhood, but less is known about how this association is reflected within families, where children’s genetic variation is correlated with both parental genotypes and family environments. We examine whether associations involving children’s own and parental polygenic scores differ for cognitive and non-cognitive genetic components of educational attainment. These scores aggregate common DNA variants using weights from genome-wide association studies.

We analyse 3,223 mother-father-child trios from the UK Millennium Cohort Study using structural equation models that jointly estimate associations involving children’s own and parental polygenic scores. Here we show that cognitive and non-cognitive education-related polygenic scores are associated with externalising behaviour, including hyperactivity and conduct problems, and internalising behaviour, including anxiety and low mood, across childhood and adolescence. Associations are generally larger in magnitude for externalising than internalising behaviour, with clearer component-specific differences for externalising behaviour.

These findings highlight the heterogeneity in education-related polygenic score associations with youth mental health within families. The authors acknowledge support from the UCL Human Genomics Data Initiative, the UCL Myriad High-Performance Computing Facility (Myriad@UCL), and associated services provided by UCL Advanced Research Computing. This work was funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme through FAMILY (grant No. 101057529), under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee [UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) grant No. 575067].

This project also received funding from the Nuffield Foundation (project EDO/43939) and the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme through I-RISK (grant agreement No. 863981). Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, London, UK José J. Morosoli, Elizabeth Orpwood, Abigail R. ter Kuile, Andrea G.

Allegrini & Jean-Baptiste Pingault Brain and Mental Health Research Program, QIMR Berghofer, Brisbane, Australia School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia Centre for Longitudinal Studies, Social Research Institute, University College London, London, UK Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, King’s College London, London, UK Andrea G. Allegrini & Jean-Baptiste Pingault The authors declare no competing interests. Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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