@article{Hagenaars2018,
title = {Genetic risk for neurodegenerative disorders, and its overlap with cognitive ability and physical function},
author = {Saskia P. Hagenaars and Ratko Radaković and Christopher Crockford and Chloe Fawns-Ritchie and International FTD-Genomics Consortium (IFGC) and Sarah E. Harris and Catharine R. Gale and Ian J. Deary
},
url = {http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0198187},
year = {2018},
date = {2018-06-01},
journal = {PLOS one},
abstract = {Neurodegenerative disorders are associated with impaired cognitive function and worse physical health outcomes. This study aims to test whether polygenic risk for Alzheimer’s disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), or frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is associated with cognitive function and physical health in the UK Biobank, a cohort of healthy individuals. Group-based analyses were then performed to compare the top and bottom 10% for the three neurodegenerative polygenic risk scores; these groups were compared on the cognitive and physical health variables. Higher polygenic risk for AD, ALS, and FTD was associated with lower cognitive performance. Higher polygenic risk for FTD was also associated with increased forced expiratory volume in 1s and peak expiratory flow. A significant group difference was observed on the symbol digit substitution task between individuals with high polygenic risk for FTD and high polygenic risk for ALS. The results suggest some overlap between polygenic risk for neurodegenerative disorders, cognitive function and physical health.},
keywords = {10279, cognitive ability, featured, genetics},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}

@article{Howard2017,
title = {Haplotype-based association analysis of general cognitive ability in Generation Scotland, the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, and UK Biobank.},
author = {DM Howard and MJ Adams and TK Clarke and EM Wigmore and Y Zeng and SP Hagenaars and DM Lyall and PA Thomson and KL Evans and DJ Porteous and R Nagy and C Hayward and CS Haley and BH Smith and AD Murray and GD Batty and IJ Deary and AM McIntosh},
url = {https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28989979},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-08-10},
journal = {Wellcome open research},
abstract = {Cognitive ability is a heritable trait with a polygenic architecture, for which several associated variants have been identified using genotype-based and candidate gene approaches. Haplotype-based analyses are a complementary technique that take phased genotype data into account, and potentially provide greater statistical power to detect lower frequency variants.
METHODS:

In the present analysis, three cohort studies (n total = 48,002) were utilised: Generation Scotland: Scottish Family Health Study (GS:SFHS), the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), and the UK Biobank. A genome-wide haplotype-based meta-analysis of cognitive ability was performed, as well as a targeted meta-analysis of several gene coding regions.
RESULTS:

None of the assessed haplotypes provided evidence of a statistically significant association with cognitive ability in either the individual cohorts or the meta-analysis. Within the meta-analysis, the haplotype with the lowest observed P-value overlapped with the D-amino acid oxidase activator ( DAOA) gene coding region. This coding region has previously been associated with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease, which have all been shown to impact upon cognitive ability. Another potentially interesting region highlighted within the current genome-wide association analysis (GS:SFHS: P = 4.09 x 10 -7), was the butyrylcholinesterase ( BCHE) gene coding region. The protein encoded by BCHE has been shown to influence the progression of Alzheimer's disease and its role in cognitive ability merits further investigation.
CONCLUSIONS:

Although no evidence was found for any haplotypes with a statistically significant association with cognitive ability, our results did provide further evidence that the genetic variants contributing to the variance of cognitive ability are likely to be of small effect.},
keywords = {4844, cognitive ability},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}