Authors
Ana I Vazquez, Yifei Li, Guanqi Lu, Harish Neelam, Molly S Bray, Sadeep Shrestha, Richard J Reynolds, Hongsheng Gui, Davorka Gulisija
Published in
Genetics. Jul 16, 2026. Epub Jul 16, 2026.
Abstract
Medical genetic studies focus on high-risk groups to enrich for targeted phenotypes. Although genetic effects may vary across the lifespan, age-related enrichment of target phenotypes can also arise from cumulative environmental exposures, without requiring changes in genetic architecture. Accumulating environmental effects over the lifetime can inflate nongenetic variance, creating the illusion of greater genetic signal while in fact masking underlying genetic effects. We propose investigating the genetic architecture of complex phenotypes in lower-risk, younger individuals, which may reduce residual variance and improve power to isolate the genetic underpinnings of complex disease-related traits. To illustrate this, we analyzed 9 complex traits across age-stratified White European cohorts in the UK Biobank. Genome-wide association analyses reveal a greater number of genome-wide significant SNPs in younger cohorts. Complementing these results, heritability analyses show a higher relative genetic contribution in younger cohorts. Together, these patterns demonstrate that genetic signals are more readily detected in lower-risk, younger individuals. This perspective suggests that temporal dynamics in genetic architecture should guide participant selection, challenging the traditional focus on high-risk older groups and highlighting the value of targeting higher-heritability groups for genetic discovery.
PMID:
42461975
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 17 Jul 2026.
Read full publication at:
Please sign in
to see all details.
Advertisement
Stats
- Recommendations n/a n/a positive of 0 vote(s)
- Views 4
- Comments 0