TY - JOUR
T1 - Association between Childhood Green Space, Genetic Liability, and the Incidence of Schizophrenia
AU - Engemann, Kristine
AU - Pedersen, Carsten Bøcker
AU - Agerbo, Esben
AU - Arge, Lars
AU - Børglum, Anders Dupont
AU - Erikstrup, Christian
AU - Hertel, Ole
AU - Hougaard, David Michael
AU - McGrath, John J.
AU - Mors, Ole
AU - Mortensen, Preben Bo
AU - Nordentoft, Merete
AU - Sabel, Clive Eric
AU - Sigsgaard, Torben
AU - Tsirogiannis, Constantinos
AU - Vilhjálmsson, Bjarni Jóhann
AU - Werge, Thomas
AU - Svenning, Jens Christian
AU - Horsdal, Henriette Thisted
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center.All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected].
PY - 2020/11/1
Y1 - 2020/11/1
N2 - Childhood exposure to green space has previously been associated with lower risk of developing schizophrenia later in life. It is unclear whether this association is mediated by genetic liability or whether the 2 risk factors work additively. Here, we investigate possible gene-environment associations with the hazard ratio (HR) of schizophrenia by combining (1) an estimate of childhood exposure to residential-level green space based on the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) from Landsat satellite images, with (2) genetic liability estimates based on polygenic risk scores for 19 746 genotyped individuals from the Danish iPSYCH sample. We used information from the Danish registers of health, residential address, and socioeconomic status to adjust HR estimates for established confounders, ie, parents' socioeconomic status, and family history of mental illness. The adjusted HRs show that growing up surrounded by the highest compared to the lowest decile of NDVI was associated with a 0.52-fold (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.40 to 0.66) lower schizophrenia risk, and children with the highest polygenic risk score had a 1.24-fold (95% CI: 1.18 to 1.30) higher schizophrenia risk. We found that NDVI explained 1.45% (95% CI: 1.07 to 1.90) of the variance on the liability scale, while polygenic risk score for schizophrenia explained 1.01% (95% CI: 0.77 to 1.46). Together they explained 2.40% (95% CI: 1.99 to 3.07) with no indication of a gene-environment interaction (P =. 29). Our results suggest that risk of schizophrenia is associated additively with green space exposure and genetic liability, and provide no support for an environment-gene interaction between NDVI and schizophrenia.
AB - Childhood exposure to green space has previously been associated with lower risk of developing schizophrenia later in life. It is unclear whether this association is mediated by genetic liability or whether the 2 risk factors work additively. Here, we investigate possible gene-environment associations with the hazard ratio (HR) of schizophrenia by combining (1) an estimate of childhood exposure to residential-level green space based on the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) from Landsat satellite images, with (2) genetic liability estimates based on polygenic risk scores for 19 746 genotyped individuals from the Danish iPSYCH sample. We used information from the Danish registers of health, residential address, and socioeconomic status to adjust HR estimates for established confounders, ie, parents' socioeconomic status, and family history of mental illness. The adjusted HRs show that growing up surrounded by the highest compared to the lowest decile of NDVI was associated with a 0.52-fold (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.40 to 0.66) lower schizophrenia risk, and children with the highest polygenic risk score had a 1.24-fold (95% CI: 1.18 to 1.30) higher schizophrenia risk. We found that NDVI explained 1.45% (95% CI: 1.07 to 1.90) of the variance on the liability scale, while polygenic risk score for schizophrenia explained 1.01% (95% CI: 0.77 to 1.46). Together they explained 2.40% (95% CI: 1.99 to 3.07) with no indication of a gene-environment interaction (P =. 29). Our results suggest that risk of schizophrenia is associated additively with green space exposure and genetic liability, and provide no support for an environment-gene interaction between NDVI and schizophrenia.
KW - ecosystem services
KW - epidemiology
KW - genetic risk
KW - mental health
KW - remote sensing
KW - urbanization
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85089349017&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1093/schbul/sbaa058
DO - 10.1093/schbul/sbaa058
M3 - Article
C2 - 32415773
AN - SCOPUS:85089349017
SN - 0586-7614
VL - 46
SP - 1629
EP - 1637
JO - Schizophrenia Bulletin
JF - Schizophrenia Bulletin
IS - 6
ER -