Article Text
Abstract
Background Genetic vulnerability to coronary heart disease (CHD) is well established, but little is known whether these effects are mediated or modified by equally well-established social determinants of CHD. We estimate the joint associations of the polygenetic risk score (PRS) for CHD and education on CHD events.
Methods The data are from the 1992, 1997, 2002, 2007 and 2012 surveys of the population-based FINRISK Study including measures of social, behavioural and metabolic factors and genome-wide genotypes (N=26 203). Follow-up of fatal and non-fatal incident CHD events (N=2063) was based on nationwide registers.
Results Allowing for age, sex, study year, region of residence, study batch and principal components, those in the highest quartile of PRS for CHD had strongly increased risk of CHD events compared with the lowest quartile (HR=2.26; 95% CI: 1.97 to 2.59); associations were also observed for low education (HR=1.58; 95% CI: 1.32 to 1.89). These effects were largely independent of each other. Adjustment for baseline smoking, alcohol use, body mass index, igh-density lipoprotein (HDL) and total cholesterol, blood pressure and diabetes attenuated the PRS associations by 10% and the education associations by 50%. We do not find strong evidence of interactions between PRS and education.
Conclusions PRS and education predict CHD events, and these associations are independent of each other. Both can improve CHD prediction beyond behavioural risks. The results imply that observational studies that do not have information on genetic risk factors for CHD do not provide confounded estimates for the association between education and CHD.
- social epidemiology
- gene environment interactions
- education
- coronary heart disease
Data availability statement
Data may be obtained from a third party and are not publicly available. FINRISK data are available from the THL Biobank based on written application and following the instructions given in the website of the Biobank (https://thl.fi/en/web/thl-biobank/for-researchers).
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Data availability statement
Data may be obtained from a third party and are not publicly available. FINRISK data are available from the THL Biobank based on written application and following the instructions given in the website of the Biobank (https://thl.fi/en/web/thl-biobank/for-researchers).
Footnotes
Correction notice This article has been corrected since it first published. The provenance and peer review statement has been included.
Contributors All authors contributed to the study design, interpretation and revising of the manuscript and approved the final version. PM drafted the first version of the manuscript. KK and AH carried out the analyses.
Funding This work was supported by grants 308247 and 294861 from the Academy of Finland, Horizon 2020 innovation action award number 667661 from the European Commission (project MINDMAP) and the Finnish Foundation for Cardiovascular Research.
Competing interests VS reports personal fees and non-financial support from Novo Nordisk, personal fees from Sanofi and grants from Bayer, outside the scope of the submitted work. All the other authors have nothing further to declare.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
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