Study explores link between people’s professions and their genetic predisposition to neuropsychiatric traits microbiologystudy

Polygenic scores (PGS) are metrics used to estimate the genetic predisposition of people to developing specific mental health conditions, personality traits or diseases. In recent years, these metrics have often been used to investigate the intricate connections between genes and environmental factors.

Researchers at the JJ Peters VA Medical Center, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and other institutes recently carried out a study aimed at determining whether neuropsychiatric polygenic scores could predict the professional categories that individuals belong to. Their findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour, suggest that these scores weakly predict the professional category that people belong to.

“Neuropsychiatric disorders are both common and highly heritable, yet they remain heavily stigmatized,” Georgios Voloudakis, first author of the paper, told Medical Xpress.

“We were inspired to examine whether certain genetic variants that increase the risk of developing these disorders might also offer potential benefits in specific contexts—a ‘trade-off’ that could help explain why these common variants persist in populations.”

The key objective of the recent work by Voloudakis and his colleagues was to investigate the complex ways in which genetic factors shape people’s individual traits and societal outcomes. Specifically, they wished to determine whether PGS scores hinting at a predisposition for specific neuropsychiatric disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or schizophrenia, are predictors of the membership to specific professional categories (e.g., “computers & math,” “arts & design,” etc.).

“In addition to looking at potential advantages, we also wanted to explore any disadvantages or barriers that individuals with a higher genetic predisposition to neuropsychiatric traits might face,” said Voloudakis.

“For example, we found that some attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)-related associations are significantly mediated by educational attainment—a key driver of career pathways. This implies that systemic biases in education can disproportionately affect individuals with a higher genetic predisposition for ADHD, even if they never receive an actual diagnosis.”

Voloudakis and his colleagues wished to better understand possible systemic biases that could preferentially lead specific individuals to particular fields, while precluding them the opportunity to approach other careers, as this could inform interventions aimed at reducing inequities in educational and professional contexts. In addition, the researchers set out to investigate the extent to which genetic predispositions can predict professional outcomes.

“Ever since the first preimplantation genetic diagnosis in 1990, and popularized notions from the 1997 sci-fi film ‘GATTACA,’ society has grappled with the idea that genetic profiles could predetermine life trajectories, including career success,” said Voloudakis. “By investigating genetic predispositions for neuropsychiatric traits, our aim was to move beyond speculation and quantify these influences in large, real-world datasets.”

To determine whether a slightly higher predisposition for specific psychiatric traits was aligned with a person’s profession, the researchers analyzed data collected as part of two of the world’s largest biobanks. One of these is the Million Veteran Program (MVP), which is run in the US, while the other is the UK Biobank (UKBB), collected in the UK.

“In MVP, participants reported their occupation(s) in a survey (they could pick more than one category), and we analyzed each occupation category separately,” explained Voloudakis.

“In UKBB, on the other hand, people’s primary occupation was recorded during an interview. We then did careful work to match up these reported jobs into common categories across both studies (for example, ‘arts & design,’ ‘health care,’ etc.). Notably, we only looked at individuals who had reached age 30 or older when they reported their jobs (to capture a reasonably settled career path).”

Voloudakis and his colleagues used past genetic studies to create PGSs for 421,889 individuals whose data was collected as part of either the MVP or UKBB projects.

As current methods for calculating PGSs rely on large-scale prior genetic studies which are currently almost exclusively available for people of European ancestry, the researchers decided to only include individuals with a European background in their study, for which PGS can be reliably estimated.

“Our next step was to link genetics to professions,” said Voloudakis. “For each profession category (e.g., ‘arts & design’) in each study, we checked whether the PGS for a certain psychiatric trait was linked to membership in that profession. In other words, we tried to determine if having a slightly higher PGS for a specific psychiatric disorder corresponded to a greater likelihood, on average, to be in a particular field.”

The researchers analyzed the scores they derived and the professional categories that people belonged to using statistical models known as logistic regressions, while also accounting for factors like age and sex, which are known to influence people’s career choices.

Notably, they replicated the analyses by additionally excluding individuals that were diagnosed with neuropsychiatric disorders to see if the same findings apply to those who only had a genetic predisposition for specific neuropsychiatric traits.

“We ran these analyses separately in MVP and UKBB to see if the patterns matched,” said Voloudakis. “We found that, although the effects were small, they were significant and quite similar between the two studies. We then combined (meta-analyzed) the results from both groups to strengthen our findings and confirm that these small effects were consistent.”

Overall, the researchers’ analyses revealed that neuropsychiatric PGS have a significant impact on people’s professional endeavors, yet this effect is small. Overall, the variation explained by genetic scores is far less than 1% for most professions.

“Even if these effects are small, because we studied so many people, we could reliably detect them,” said Voloudakis. “These findings don’t mean we can predict someone’s job based on their genetics. Rather, they highlight subtle group-level trends. On average, people with a higher PGS for certain traits might be slightly more likely to end up in certain jobs.”

The researchers found that the “tiny genetic signals” influencing people’s professional outcomes are both reproducible and consistent. Nonetheless, they are not strong enough to determine what a particular individual’s career path will be, as other factors (e.g., environment, education, interests and opportunities) play a far greater role in determining people’s profession.

“A major takeaway is that while we do see statistically significant associations between several neuropsychiatric traits and professional categories, each trait’s polygenic score (PGS) explains less than 0.4% of the variation in whether a person enters a particular profession,” said Voloudakis. “In other words, there is a real but weak genetic signal in these career placements.”

Interestingly, the researchers found that both age and sex played a far greater role in determining the professions that individuals will pursue compared to neuropsychiatric PGSs. Age accounted for approximately 21% of the observed variance in profession, while sex accounted for 7%.

“Our findings emphasize that demographic and social factors far outweigh genetic predisposition when it comes to occupational outcomes,” explained Voloudakis.

“Finally, they indicate that neuropsychiatric PGS does not—and almost certainly will not—serve as a reliable tool to predict or determine someone’s career path. Environmental, social, and personal factors continue to play a much larger role in shaping individual outcomes than any single genetic measure.”

The results of this recent study suggest that while a genetic predisposition for specific traits is associated with choices in professions, this association is far too weak to use PGS to predict people’s professional categories. Nonetheless, these scores could be useful for research exploring broad social contexts, in which genetic, environmental and systemic factors interact, shaping people’s individual outcomes.

“We now plan to continue exploring how genetic variations, known as risk variants, associated with neuropsychiatric disorders can influence multiple aspects of health and behavior—a phenomenon known as pleiotropy,” said Voloudakis.

“These genetic variations may not only contribute to specific psychiatric conditions but could also impact broader areas, such as cognitive abilities, emotional regulation, and other key mental functions.”

In their next studies, Voloudakis and his colleagues plan to continue exploring the link between PGS and specific aspects of people’s lives, experiences and skills. This could help them to shed new light on the sophisticated biological mechanisms connecting genetics and mental health.

“Our ultimate goal is to use this knowledge within a computational psychiatry framework, which combines advanced data analysis and modeling techniques, to gain deeper insights into how these genetic factors shape mental health and cognition,” added Voloudakis. “This approach could help pave the way for more precise and personalized treatments in the future.”

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