In complete-case sensitivity analyses, maternal education showed unexpected positive associations with children's depressive and ADHD-inattention traits¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2024 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? In complete-case within-family MR, mother's educational attainment was positively related to child depressive and ADHD-inattention traits. → Hughes 2024

Evidence¶

Hughes 2024¶

Hughes, A. M., Torvik, F. A., van Bergen, E., Hannigan, L. J., Corfield, E. C., Andreassen, O. A., Ystrom, E., Ask, H., Davey Smith, G., Davies, N. M. & Havdahl, A. (2024). Parental education and children’s depression, anxiety, and ADHD traits, a within-family study in MoBa. npj Science of Learning. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-024-00260-8

q2 · i? · causal · r2

Complete-case (unimputed) sensitivity analysis on the much smaller subsets with full data (around 15% of the analytic sample). The child's education PGI was clearly associated with ADHD traits (−0.06, p = 0.001) but not anxiety or depressive traits in this analysis. The authors flag the positive maternal estimates as unexpected and selection-prone.

"Unexpectedly, in Mendelian randomization models adjusting for the child’s genotype, mother’s educational attainment was positively related to the child’s depressive (0.16, CI: 0.02, 0.30,p = 0.03) and ADHD-inattention traits (0.21, CI: 0.06, 0.35,p = 0.006)."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Children's own polygenic index for educational attainment is negatively associated with their depressive traits at age 8 — related
• Within-family Mendelian randomization finds little evidence that mothers' or fathers' educational attainment causally affects children's depressive, anxiety, or ADHD traits at age 8 — reports the opposite
• Two-sample MR finds inverse-variance weighted estimates linking maternal education to fewer depressive but more ADHD-inattention traits, with other estimators consistent with the null — related
• Non-genetic models show small negative associations between parents' years of education and children's depressive traits, which attenuate once confounders are accounted for — related
• Children's own polygenic index for educational attainment is negatively associated with their ADHD traits at age 8, independent of parental PGIs — related