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. 2016 Nov 22;113(47):13366-13371.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1605334113. Epub 2016 Oct 31.

Genetic variants linked to education predict longevity

Riccardo E Marioni  1   2   3 , Stuart J Ritchie  4   5 , Peter K Joshi  6 , Saskia P Hagenaars  4   5   7 , Aysu Okbay  8   9   10 , Krista Fischer  11 , Mark J Adams  7 , W David Hill  4   5 , Gail Davies  4   5 ; Social Science Genetic Association Consortium; Reka Nagy  12 , Carmen Amador  12 , Kristi Läll  11   13 , Andres Metspalu  11 , David C Liewald  4   5 , Archie Campbell  2 , James F Wilson  6   12 , Caroline Hayward  12 , Tõnu Esko  11   13   14   15 , David J Porteous  4   2 , Catharine R Gale  4   5   16 , Ian J Deary  4   5
Collaborators, Affiliations

Genetic variants linked to education predict longevity

Riccardo E Marioni et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

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 = ∼17,000; UK Biobank, n = ∼115,000; and the Estonian Biobank, n = ∼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 ∼2.7% lower mortality risk for both mothers (total ndeaths = 79,702) and ∼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.

Keywords: education; genetics; longevity; polygenic score; prediction.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Parental age at death by education polygenic score decile in each cohort. Error bars in all three plots represent ±1 standard error of the mean. Note that this plot does not include data from participants whose mother and/or father was living at the time of assessment.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Forest plot for the fixed-effects meta-analysis of the association between educational polygenic profile score and mortality risk for mothers and fathers across the three samples. HRs are for a 1 SD higher polygenic profile score.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

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