| 1. |
- Becker, Joel, et al.
(författare)
-
Resource profile and user guide of the Polygenic Index Repository
- 2021
-
Ingår i: Nature Human Behaviour. - : Nature Research (part of Springer Nature). - 2397-3374. ; 51:6, s. 694-695
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Polygenic indexes (PGIs) are DNA-based predictors. Their value for research in many scientific disciplines is growing rapidly. As a resource for researchers, we used a consistent methodology to construct PGIs for 47 phenotypes in 11 datasets. To maximize the PGIs’ prediction accuracies, we constructed them using genome-wide association studies—some not previously published—from multiple data sources, including 23andMe and UK Biobank. We present a theoretical framework to help interpret analyses involving PGIs. A key insight is that a PGI can be understood as an unbiased but noisy measure of a latent variable we call the ‘additive SNP factor’. Regressions in which the true regressor is this factor but the PGI is used as its proxy therefore suffer from errors-in-variables bias. We derive an estimator that corrects for the bias, illustrate the correction, and make a Python tool for implementing it publicly available. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
|
|
| 2. |
- Berglund, Fanny, et al.
(författare)
-
Dietary habits among snus users : a population-based cross-sectional study
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Food & Nutrition Research. - : SNF Swedish Nutrition Foundation. - 1654-6628 .- 1654-661X. ; 67
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: The dietary habits among snus users are largely unknown and have not been accounted for in observational studies on the health effects of snus use.Aim: To examine whether snus users eat unhealthier than never tobacco users.Methods: A total of 3,397 male participants, examined between 1994 and 2014 in the Northern Sweden Monitoring of Trends and Determinants in Cardiovascular Disease (MONICA) study, were included. Snus use and dietary habits were self-reported using questionnaires, from which intakes of different food groups, macronutrients, and a healthy diet score (HDS) were calculated (the latter as a proxy for overall diet quality). The association between snus use and dietary habits was examined by quantile regression models.Results: In the multivariable-adjusted model, current snus users had a lower HDS (median difference: -0.86 [95% confidence interval: -1.32, -0.40]) than never tobacco users. Snus users also consumed fewer weekly servings of fruits and berries (median difference: -1.03 [-1.65, -0.40]), and their estimated percentage of energy intake con -sisted of less carbohydrates (median difference: -1.43 [-2.12, -0.74]) and of more total fat (median difference: 0.99 [0.30, 1.67]), saturated fat (median difference: 0.67 [0.29, 1.05]), monounsaturated fat (median difference: 0.44 [0.20, 0.68]), trans fat (median difference: 0.03 [0.01, 0.06]), and alcohol (median difference: 0.21 [0.02, 0.40]).Conclusion: We observed that snus users had an unhealthier diet than never tobacco users. Future studies on the association between snus use and health outcomes should, therefore, consider diet as a potential confounder.
|
|
| 3. |
- Byhamre, Marja Lisa, et al.
(författare)
-
Association between snus use and lipid status in Swedish men
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Scandinavian Journal of Clinical and Laboratory Investigation. - : Taylor & Francis. - 0036-5513 .- 1502-7686. ; 83:4, s. 241-250
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Snus is a common tobacco product in Sweden, but the cardiovascular risk profile for snus users is less known than for cigarette smokers. We examined the association of snus use with lipid status, particularly in comparison to non-tobacco use and cigarette smoking, using data from 5930 men in the Northern Sweden MONICA study. Tobacco use was self-reported in 1986 to 2014 (24.4% used snus) and blood samples were collected at the same time. Harmonized analyses on non-high-density lipoprotein (non-HDL) cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, and triglycerides were conducted in 2016 to 2018. Three hundred eighty-one snus users had also been examined more than once, allowing us to study the effect of discontinued use (achieved by 21.0%). In multivariable linear regression models, snus use was associated with higher HDL cholesterol and triglyceride concentrations compared to non-tobacco use (p values ≤ 0.04), and it was associated with higher HDL cholesterol concentrations and lower triglyceride concentrations compared to cigarette smoking (p values ≤ 0.02). Snus use was not associated with non-HDL cholesterol concentrations, irrespective of the comparison group (p values ≥ 0.07). There was no indication that higher intensity of snus use led to a worse lipid profile, given that high-consumers had higher HDL cholesterol concentrations than low-consumers (p value = 0.02), or that discontinuation of snus use led to a better lipid profile, given that continued users had lower triglyceride concentrations than discontinued users (p value = 0.03). Further studies are needed to confirm or refute our findings.
|
|
| 4. |
|
|
| 5. |
- Dawes, Christopher T., et al.
(författare)
-
Linking Genes and Political Orientations: Testing the Cognitive Ability as Mediator Hypothesis
- 2015
-
Ingår i: Political Psychology. - : Wiley: 24 months. - 1467-9221 .- 0162-895X. ; 36:6, s. 649-665
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recent research has demonstrated that genetic differences explain a sizeable fraction of the variance in political orientations, but little is known about the pathways through which genes might affect political preferences. In this article, we use a uniquely assembled dataset of almost 1,000 Swedish male twin pairs containing detailed information on cognitive ability and political attitudes in order to further examine the genetic and environmental causes of political orientations. Our study makes three distinct contributions to our understanding of the etiology of political orientations: (1) we report heritability estimates across different dimensions of political ideology; (2) we show that cognitive ability and political orientations are related; and (3) we provide evidence consistent with the hypothesis that cognitive ability mediates part of the genetic influence on political orientations. These findings provide important clues about the nature of the complex pathways from molecular genetic variation to political orientations.
|
|
| 6. |
- Dawes, Christopher T, et al.
(författare)
-
The Relationship Between Genes, Psychological Traits, and Political Participation
- 2014
-
Ingår i: American Journal of Political Science. - : Wiley-Blackwell. - 0092-5853 .- 1540-5907. ; 58:4, s. 888-903
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recent research demonstrates that a wide range of political attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors canbe explained in part by genetic variation. However, these studies have not yet identied themechanisms that generate such a relationship. Some scholars have speculated that psychologicaltraits mediate the relationship between genes and political participation, but so far there havebeen no empirical tests. Here we focus on the role of three psychological traits that are believed toinuence political participation: cognitive ability, personal control, and extraversion. Utilizinga unique sample of more than 2,000 Swedish twin pairs, we show that a common genetic factorcan explain most of the relationship between these psychological traits and acts of politicalparticipation as well as predispositions related to participation. While our analysis is not adenitive test, our results suggest an upper bound for a proposed mediation relationship betweengenes, psychological traits, and political participation.
|
|
| 7. |
- Dinesen, Peter Thisted, et al.
(författare)
-
Estimating the Impact of Education on Political Participation : Evidence from Monozygotic Twins in the United States, Denmark and Sweden
- 2016
-
Ingår i: Political Behavior. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0190-9320 .- 1573-6687. ; 38:3, s. 579-601
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this study we provide new evidence on the much-discussed effect of education on political participation by utilizing the quasi-experiment of twinning. By looking at the relationship between education and participation within monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs we are able to circumvent traditional sources of confounding of the relationship rooted in genes and early life family environment because MZ twins share both. The results of within-twin pair analyses based on surveys from the United States, Denmark and Sweden show that while the relationship between education and political participation is highly confounded by genes and/or familial environment in all three countries, a positive impact remains of years of education in the US and of high school completion in Denmark. No effect is found in Sweden. Robustness checks suggest that the observed effect is not confounded by within-twin pair differences in prenatal environment nor differential treatment during childhood, and, if anything, that it most likely constitutes a lower bound estimate.
|
|
| 8. |
|
|
| 9. |
|
|
| 10. |
- Hatemi, Peter, et al.
(författare)
-
Genetic Influences on Political Ideologies : Twin Analyses of 19 Measures of Political Ideologies from Five Democraciesand Genome-Wide Findings from Three Populations
- 2014
-
Ingår i: Behavior Genetics. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0001-8244 .- 1573-3297. ; 44:3, s. 282-294
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Almost 40 years ago, evidence from large studies of adult twins and their relatives suggested that between 30 and 60 % of the variance in social and political attitudes could be explained by genetic influences. However, these findings have not been widely accepted or incorporated into the dominant paradigms that explain the etiology of political ideology. This has been attributed in part to measurement and sample limitations, as well the relative absence of molecular genetic studies. Here we present results from original analyses of a combined sample of over 12,000 twins pairs, ascertained from nine different studies conducted in five democracies, sampled over the course of four decades. We provide evidence that genetic factors play a role in the formation of political ideology, regardless of how ideology is measured, the era, or the population sampled. The only exception is a question that explicitly uses the phrase “Left–Right”. We then present results from one of the first genome-wide association studies on political ideology using data from three samples: a 1990 Australian sample involving 6,894 individuals from 3,516 families; a 2008 Australian sample of 1,160 related individuals from 635 families and a 2010 Swedish sample involving 3,334 individuals from 2,607 families. No polymorphisms reached genome-wide significance in the meta-analysis. The combined evidence suggests that political ideology constitutes a fundamental aspect of one’s genetically informed psychological disposition, but as Fisher proposed long ago, genetic influences on complex traits will be composed of thousands of markers of very small effects and it will require extremely large samples to have enough power in order to identify specific polymorphisms related to complex social traits.
|
|
