22nd Meeting of the Irish Society of Human Genetics: Friday 20th September 2019 Stranmillis University College, Belfast.

摘要: BackgroundAge-related cognitive decline results in increased difficulty in performing tasks that require memory or rapid information processing. Cognitive resilience is the ability to withstand the negative effects of stress on cognitive functioning. The polygenetic contribution to cognitive resilience requires large data sets for analysis. In addition, longitudinal data is needed to identify individual differences in cognitive performance over time. The UK Biobank cohort of over 500,000 participants over the age of 40 offers the potential to advance research on the genetics and biology of cognitive resilience.MethodsWe created a longitudinal cognitive resilience phenotype by combining the phenotypic cognitive parameter of current reaction time with a proxy phenotype of education years (EY). We used this resilience phenotype, in genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to identify genes and gene sets that influence the biological pathways involved in resilience. To remove the influence of the EY on the analysis we compared genetic data on participants that displayed resilience to those that showed expected cognitive decline.ResultsGWAS outputs analysis showed 273 significantly enriched genes for participants that demonstrated resilience. Genotype–tissue expression was significant in brain tissue, particularly in the anterior cingulate cortex, frontal cortex, and hippocampus. Biological Pathway analysis includes synapse, post synaptic density and neuron guidance.ConclusionThis analysis shows an association between cognitive resilience and enrichment of neuronal activity. Confirmatory examination of these findings in datasets with strong …