Educational Attainment and Ischemic Stroke: A Mendelian Randomization Study

The objective of our study was to evaluate the potential causal association between higher education and the risk of stroke. Here, we performed a Mendelian randomization analysis to evaluate the potential association of educational attainment with ischemic stroke (IS) using large-scale GWAS datasets from the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium (SSGAC, 293,723 individuals), UK Biobank (111,349 individuals), and METASTROKE consortium (74,393 individuals). We selected three Mendelian randomization methods including inverse-variance-weighted meta-analysis (IVW), weighted median regression, and MR–Egger regression. IVW showed that each additional 3.6-year increase in years of schooling was significantly associated with a reduced IS risk (OR = 0.54, 95% CI: 0.41–0.71, and p = 1.16 × 10–5). Importantly, the estimates from weighted median (OR = 0.49, 95% CI: 0.33–0.73, and p = 1.00 × 10–3) and MR–Egger estimate (OR = 0.18, 95% CI: 0.06–0.60, and p = 5.00 × 10–3) were consistent with the IVW estimate in terms of direction and magnitude. In summary, we provide genetic evidence that high education could reduce IS risk.
Source: Frontiers in Genetics - Category: Genetics & Stem Cells Source Type: research