@article{discovery10172000,
            year = {2023},
           month = {June},
         journal = {International Journal of Epidemiology},
           title = {Educational attainment, health outcomes and mortality: a within-sibship Mendelian randomization study},
            note = {{\copyright} The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.},
       publisher = {Oxford University Press (OUP)},
            issn = {0300-5771},
        keywords = {Mendelian randomization, Within-sibship, educational attainment, mortality},
          author = {Howe, Laurence J and Rasheed, Humaira and Jones, Paul R and Boomsma, Dorret I and Evans, David M and Giannelis, Alexandros and Hayward, Caroline and Hopper, John L and Hughes, Amanda and Lahtinen, Hannu and Li, Shuai and Lind, Penelope A and Martin, Nicholas G and Martikainen, Pekka and Medland, Sarah E and Morris, Tim T and Nivard, Michel G and Pingault, Jean-Baptiste and Silventoinen, Karri and Smith, Jennifer A and Willoughby, Emily A and Wilson, James F and Within Family Consortium, {} and {\AA}svold, Bj{\o}rn Olav and N{\ae}ss, {\O}yvind E and Davey Smith, George and Kaprio, Jaakko and Brumpton, Ben and Davies, Neil M},
             url = {https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyad079},
        abstract = {BACKGROUND: Previous Mendelian randomization (MR) studies using population samples (population MR) have provided evidence for beneficial effects of educational attainment on health outcomes in adulthood. However, estimates from these studies may have been susceptible to bias from population stratification, assortative mating and indirect genetic effects due to unadjusted parental genotypes. MR using genetic association estimates derived from within-sibship models (within-sibship MR) can avoid these potential biases because genetic differences between siblings are due to random segregation at meiosis. METHODS: Applying both population and within-sibship MR, we estimated the effects of genetic liability to educational attainment on body mass index (BMI), cigarette smoking, systolic blood pressure (SBP) and all-cause mortality. MR analyses used individual-level data on 72 932 siblings from UK Biobank and the Norwegian HUNT study, and summary-level data from a within-sibship Genome-wide Association Study including {\ensuremath{>}}140 000 individuals. RESULTS: Both population and within-sibship MR estimates provided evidence that educational attainment decreased BMI, cigarette smoking and SBP. Genetic variant-outcome associations attenuated in the within-sibship model, but genetic variant-educational attainment associations also attenuated to a similar extent. Thus, within-sibship and population MR estimates were largely consistent. The within-sibship MR estimate of education on mortality was imprecise but consistent with a putative effect. CONCLUSIONS: These results provide evidence of beneficial individual-level effects of education (or liability to education) on adulthood health, independently of potential demographic and family-level confounders.}
}