An atlas of genetic correlations across human diseases and traits

Brendan Bulik-Sullivan*, Hilary K Finucane*, Verneri Anttila, Alexander Gusev, Felix R Day, Po-Ru Loh, ReproGen Consortium, Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, Genetic Consortium for Anorexia Nervosa (GCAN), Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium 3 (WTCCC3), Laramie Duncan, John R B Perry, Nick Patterson, Elise B Robinson, Mark J Daly, Alkes L Price*, Benjamin M Neale*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

2606 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Identifying genetic correlations between complex traits and diseases can provide useful etiological insights and help prioritize likely causal relationships. The major challenges preventing estimation of genetic correlation from genome-wide association study (GWAS) data with current methods are the lack of availability of individual-level genotype data and widespread sample overlap among meta-analyses. We circumvent these difficulties by introducing a technique-cross-trait LD Score regression-for estimating genetic correlation that requires only GWAS summary statistics and is not biased by sample overlap. We use this method to estimate 276 genetic correlations among 24 traits. The results include genetic correlations between anorexia nervosa and schizophrenia, anorexia and obesity, and educational attainment and several diseases. These results highlight the power of genome-wide analyses, as there currently are no significantly associated SNPs for anorexia nervosa and only three for educational attainment.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1236-1241
Number of pages6
JournalNature Genetics
Volume47
Issue number11
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Nov 2015

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