Cited by 340Genetic Associations and EpidemiologyGenomics and Rare DiseasesGenetics and Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Common genetic variants contribute to risk of rare severe neurodevelopmental disorders

Open access
Niemi, Mari E. K., Martin, Hilary C., Rice, Daniel L., Gallone, Giuseppe, Gordon, Scott, Kelemen, Martin, McAloney, Kerrie, McRae, Jeremy +9 more·2018·Nature

Published version of a preprint

Abstract

There are thousands of rare human disorders that are caused by single deleterious, protein-coding genetic variants 1. However, patients with the same genetic defect can have different clinical presentations 2-4, and some individuals who carry known disease-causing variants can appear unaffected 5. Here, to understand what explains these differences, we study a cohort of 6,987 children assessed by clinical geneticists to have severe neurodevelopmental disorders such as global developmental delay and autism, often in combination with abnormalities of other organ systems. Although the genetic causes of these neurodevelopmental disorders are expected to be almost entirely monogenic, we show that 7.7% of variance in risk is attributable to inherited common genetic variation. We replicated this genome-wide common variant burden by showing, in an independent sample of 728 trios (comprising a child plus both parents) from the same cohort, that this burden is over-transmitted from parents to children with neurodevelopmental disorders. Our common-variant signal is significantly positively correlated with genetic predisposition to lower educational attainment, decreased intelligence and risk of schizophrenia. We found that common-variant risk was not significantly different between individuals with and without a known protein-coding diagnostic variant, which suggests that common-variant risk affects patients both with and without a monogenic diagnosis. In addition, previously published common-variant scores for autism, height, birth weight and intracranial volume were all correlated with these traits within our cohort, which suggests that phenotypic expression in individuals with monogenic disorders is affected by the same variants as in the general population. Our results demonstrate that common genetic variation affects both overall risk and clinical presentation in neurodevelopmental disorders that are typically considered to be monogenic.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1038/s41586-018-0566-4

Cites

47 of 47 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • The genetic causes underlying NDDs are diverse, ranging from single gene mutations, copy number variations to whole-chromosome aberrations.

    “The genetic causes underlying NDDs are diverse ranging from single gene mutations, copy number variations to whole‐chromosome aberrations [263].”

    From Development of prefrontal cortex (2022) · cites this paper as [263]

    The Abstract (page unavailable) describes severe neurodevelopmental disorders as typically monogenic and discusses rare single-gene variants alongside inherited common variation. It does not identify copy-number variations or whole-chromosome aberrations as causes of these disorders. The only CNV mention found is in a reference title about schizophrenia. (LLM, conf=0.86)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • Evidence suggests reduced SNP heritability for forms of ASD in which co-diagnosed ID is more common.

    “Further, evidence suggests reduced SNP heritability for forms of ASD in which co-diagnosed ID is more common.15,25”
  • The genetic correlation between ID and ASD is not significantly different from zero as currently estimated.

    “as currently estimated, the genetic correlation between ID and ASD is not significantly different from zero.25”
  • When directly examined, polygenic risk combines additively with major mutation burden.

    “In the instances where this has been studied directly, polygenic risk acts additively with major mutational burdens (Gaugler et al., 2014; Niemi et al., 2018; Purcell et al., 2014; Weiner et al., 2017).”
  • Individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders carrying a reportable clinical diagnostic variant have significantly increased PRS.

    “This study reported that individuals with NDDs who carry a reportable clinical diagnostic variant have a significantly increased PRS.”

    From Getting to the cores of autism (2019) · cites this paper as Niemi et al., 2018

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Niemi, M. E. K., Martin, H. C., Rice, D. L., Gallone, G., Gordon, S., Kelemen, M., McAloney, K., McRae, J., Radford, E. J., Yu, S., Gecz, J., Martin, N. G., Wright, C. F., Fitzpatrick, D. R., Firth, H. V., Hurles, M. E., & Barrett, J. C.
Affiliations
  • Wellcome Sanger Institute (GB)
  • QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute (AU)
  • University of Cambridge (GB)
  • South Australia Pathology (AU)
  • University of Exeter (GB)
  • Western General Hospital (GB)
  • Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (GB)
Corresponding author
Barrett, Jeffrey C.
Venue
Nature
Published
2018-09-26
Volume
562
Issue
7726
Pages
268-271
ISSN
  • 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
  • 1476-4687
OpenAlex
W2952988698
Cited by
340
References
46
Citations by year
2026: 20 · 2025: 45 · 2024: 39 · 2023: 41 · 2022: 54 · 2021: 52 · 2020: 41 · 2019: 41 · 2018: 7
FWCI
21.62
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Nature (publishedVersion)
  • bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nd)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • Open Research Exeter (University of Exeter) (acceptedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • Adelaide Research & Scholarship (AR&S) (University of Adelaide) (submittedVersion)
  • Figshare (submittedVersion)
  • Edinburgh Research Explorer (University of Edinburgh) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • Apollo (University of Cambridge) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • Apollo
Funders
  • University of Essex (ES/M008592/1)
  • Wellcome Trust (HICF-1009-003, 091986, GEN/284/12, WT 098051, 10/H0305/83, 213422/Z/18/Z, 098051)
  • Understanding Society
  • National Institute for Health and Care Research (10/H0305/83, ACF-2015-14-007, HICF-1009-003, WT098051)
  • Medical Research Council (MR/N01104X/1, MR/N01104X/2, WT098051, MC_UU_00007/3, Grant Number: MR/N01104X/1)
  • Economic and Social Research Council (MR/N01104X/1, ES/M008592/1, ES/S008349/1)
  • National Health and Medical Research Council
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetic Associations and Epidemiology
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genomics and Rare Diseases
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetics and Neurodevelopmental Disorders
Keywords
neurodevelopmental disorders, common genetic variants, monogenic disorders, global developmental delay, autism spectrum disorder, genetic burden, educational attainment, intelligence, schizophrenia risk, phenotypic expression, clinical heterogeneity, intracranial volume, birth weight, height
MeSH terms
Autistic Disorder, Birth Weight, Body Height, Developmental Disabilities, Female, Humans, Intelligence, Male, Phenotype, Schizophrenia, Genetic Variation, Cohort Studies, Linkage Disequilibrium, Case-Control Studies, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Multifactorial Inheritance, Rare Diseases, Genome-Wide Association Study, Neurodevelopmental Disorders

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review