Relationships between genetic risks for chronic diseases and long-run wellbeing are largely unexplored. We examined the associations between genetic predispositions to several chronic conditions and long-term functional health and socioeconomic status.
We used data on a nationally representative sample of 9317 adults 65 years or older from the 1992-2012 Health and Retirement Survey in the US. Survey data were linked to genetic data on nearly 2 million SNPs. We measured individual-level genetic predispositions for coronary-artery disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, rheumatoid arthritis, Alzheimer's disease, and major depressive disorder by polygenic risk scores derived from genome-wide association studies. The outcomes were self-rated health, depressive symptoms, cognitive ability, activities of everyday life, educational attainment and wealth. We employed regression analyses for the outcomes including all polygenic scores and adjusting for gender, birth period, and genetic ancestry.
The polygenic scores had important associations with functional health and socioeconomic status. An increase in genetic risk for all conditions except type 2 diabetes was significantly (p<0.01) associated with reduced functional health and socioeconomic outcomes. The magnitudes of functional health declines were meaningful and in many cases equivalent in magnitude to several years of aging. These associations were robust to several sensitivity checks for ancestry and adjustment for parental educational attainment and age at death or last interview if alive.
Stronger genetic predispositions for leading chronic conditions are related to worse long-run health and SES outcomes, likely reflecting the adverse effects of the onset of these conditions on one's wellbeing.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 6. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 01 March 2024.
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#9,322,809
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Outputs from Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences & Medical Sciences
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Outputs of similar age from Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences & Medical Sciences
#18
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Altmetric has tracked 34,372,222 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 72nd percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,821 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 19.3. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 54% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 49 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 61% of its contemporaries.
