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Genetic association study of childhood aggression across raters, instruments, and age

  • Hill F. Ip
  • , Camiel M. van der Laan
  • , Eva M.L. Krapohl
  • , Isabell Brikell
  • , Cristina Sánchez-Mora
  • , Ilja M. Nolte
  • , Beate St Pourcain
  • , Koen Bolhuis
  • , Teemu Palviainen
  • , Hadi Zafarmand
  • , Lucía Colodro-Conde
  • , Scott Gordon
  • , Tetyana Zayats
  • , Fazil Aliev
  • , Chang Jiang
  • , Carol A. Wang
  • , Gretchen Saunders
  • , Ville Karhunen
  • , Anke R. Hammerschlag
  • , Daniel E. Adkins
  • Richard Border, Roseann E. Peterson, Joseph A. Prinz, Elisabeth Thiering, Ilkka Seppälä, Natàlia Vilor-Tejedor, Tarunveer S. Ahluwalia, Felix R. Day, Jouke Jan Hottenga, Andrea G. Allegrini, Kaili Rimfeld, Qi Chen, Yi Lu, Joanna Martin, María Soler Artigas, Paula Rovira, Rosa Bosch, Gemma Español, Josep Antoni Ramos Quiroga, Alexander Neumann, Judith Ensink, Katrina Grasby, José J. Morosoli, Xiaoran Tong, Shelby Marrington, Christel Middeldorp, James G. Scott, Anna Vinkhuyzen, Andrey A. Shabalin, Robin Corley, Luke M. Evans, Karen Sugden, Silvia Alemany, Lærke Sass, Rebecca Vinding, Kate Ruth, Jess Tyrrell, Gareth E. Davies, Erik A. Ehli, Fiona A. Hagenbeek, Eveline De Zeeuw, Toos C.E.M. Van Beijsterveldt, Henrik Larsson, Harold Snieder, Frank C. Verhulst, Najaf Amin, Alyce M. Whipp, Tellervo Korhonen, Eero Vuoksimaa, Richard J. Rose, André G. Uitterlinden, Andrew C. Heath, Pamela Madden, Jan Haavik, Jennifer R. Harris, Øyvind Helgeland, Stefan Johansson, Gun Peggy S. Knudsen, Pal Rasmus Njolstad, Qing Lu, Alina Rodriguez, Anjali K. Henders, Abdullah Mamun, Jackob M. Najman, Sandy Brown, Christian Hopfer, Kenneth Krauter, Chandra Reynolds, Andrew Smolen, Michael Stallings, Sally Wadsworth, Tamara L. Wall, Judy L. Silberg, Allison Miller, Liisa Keltikangas-Järvinen, Christian Hakulinen, Laura Pulkki-Råback, Alexandra Havdahl, Per Magnus, Olli T. Raitakari, John R.B. Perry, Sabrina Llop, Maria Jose Lopez-Espinosa, Klaus Bønnelykke, Hans Bisgaard, Jordi Sunyer, Terho Lehtimäki, Louise Arseneault, Marie Standl, Joachim Heinrich, Joseph Boden, John Pearson, L. John Horwood, Martin Kennedy, Richie Poulton, Lindon J. Eaves, Hermine H. Maes, John Hewitt, William E. Copeland, Elizabeth J. Costello, Gail M. Williams, Naomi Wray, Marjo Riitta Järvelin, Matt McGue, William Iacono, Avshalom Caspi, Terrie E. Moffitt, Andrew Whitehouse, Craig E. Pennell, Kelly L. Klump, S. Alexandra Burt, Danielle M. Dick, Ted Reichborn-Kjennerud, Nicholas G. Martin, Sarah E. Medland, Tanja Vrijkotte, Jaakko Kaprio, Henning Tiemeier, George Davey Smith, Catharina A. Hartman, Albertine J. Oldehinkel, Miquel Casas, Marta Ribasés, Paul Lichtenstein, Sebastian Lundström, Robert Plomin, Meike Bartels*, Michel G. Nivard*, Dorret I. Boomsma*
*Corresponding author for this work
  • Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
  • The Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement
  • King's College London
  • Karolinska Institutet
  • University Hospital Vall d'Hebron
  • San Juan de Dios Sanitary Park
  • Autonomous University of Barcelona
  • University of Groningen
  • University of Bristol
  • Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
  • Radboud University Nijmegen
  • Erasmus University Rotterdam
  • University of Helsinki
  • Amsterdam University Medical Centers
  • Queensland Institute of Medical Research
  • University of Bergen
  • Massachusetts General Hospital
  • Broad Institute
  • Virginia Commonwealth University
  • Karabuk University
  • Michigan State University
  • University of Florida
  • University of Newcastle
  • University of Minnesota Twin Cities
  • Imperial College London
  • University of Queensland
  • University of Amsterdam
  • University of Utah
  • University of Colorado Boulder
  • Duke University
  • Helmholtz Zentrum München - German Research Center for Environmental Health
  • Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
  • Tampere University
  • Barcelona Institute for Global Health
  • Pompeu Fabra University
  • Biomedical Research Networking Center in Epidemiology and Public Health (CiberESP)
  • The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology
  • Pasqual Maragall Foundation
  • University of Copenhagen
  • Novo Nordisk Foundation
  • University of Cambridge
  • Cardiff University
  • Sir Mortimer B. Davis-Jewish General Hospital
  • De Bascule
  • Children’s Health Queensland
  • University of Exeter
  • Avera Health
  • Örebro University
  • Indiana University Bloomington
  • Netherlands Genomics Initiative
  • Washington University St. Louis
  • Norwegian Institute of Public Health
  • University of Lincoln
  • University of California at San Diego
  • University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
  • University of California at Riverside
  • University of Otago
  • Lovisenberg Diakonale Hospital
  • University of Turku
  • Jaume I University
  • University of Valencia
  • Hospital del Mar
  • University of Melbourne
  • University of Vermont
  • University of Oulu
  • Telethon Kids Institute
  • University of Oslo
  • Harvard University
  • University of Gothenburg

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Childhood aggressive behavior (AGG) has a substantial heritability of around 50%. Here we present a genome-wide association meta-analysis (GWAMA) of childhood AGG, in which all phenotype measures across childhood ages from multiple assessors were included. We analyzed phenotype assessments for a total of 328 935 observations from 87 485 children aged between 1.5 and 18 years, while accounting for sample overlap. We also meta-analyzed within subsets of the data, i.e., within rater, instrument and age. SNP-heritability for the overall meta-analysis (AGGoverall) was 3.31% (SE = 0.0038). We found no genome-wide significant SNPs for AGGoverall. The gene-based analysis returned three significant genes: ST3GAL3 (P = 1.6E–06), PCDH7 (P = 2.0E–06), and IPO13 (P = 2.5E–06). All three genes have previously been associated with educational traits. Polygenic scores based on our GWAMA significantly predicted aggression in a holdout sample of children (variance explained = 0.44%) and in retrospectively assessed childhood aggression (variance explained = 0.20%). Genetic correlations (rg) among rater-specific assessment of AGG ranged from rg = 0.46 between self- and teacher-assessment to rg = 0.81 between mother- and teacher-assessment. We obtained moderate-to-strong rgs with selected phenotypes from multiple domains, but hardly with any of the classical biomarkers thought to be associated with AGG. Significant genetic correlations were observed with most psychiatric and psychological traits (range ∣ rg∣ : 0.19–1.00), except for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Aggression had a negative genetic correlation (rg = ~−0.5) with cognitive traits and age at first birth. Aggression was strongly genetically correlated with smoking phenotypes (range ∣ rg∣ : 0.46–0.60). The genetic correlations between aggression and psychiatric disorders were weaker for teacher-reported AGG than for mother- and self-reported AGG. The current GWAMA of childhood aggression provides a powerful tool to interrogate the rater-specific genetic etiology of AGG.

Original languageEnglish
Article number413
JournalTranslational Psychiatry
Volume11
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2021
Externally publishedYes

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