A genome-wide association study identifies a new variant associated with word reading fluency in Chinese children |
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Authors: | Zhengjun Wang Shunan Zhao Liming Zhang Qing Yang Chen Cheng Ning Ding Zijian Zhu Hua Shu Chunyu Liu Jingjing Zhao |
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Institution: | 1. School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University and Shaanxi Provincial Key Research Center of Child Mental and Behavioral Health, Xi'an, China;2. State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China;3. School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University and Shaanxi Provincial Key Research Center of Child Mental and Behavioral Health, Xi'an, China
The School of Life Sciences, Central South University, Changsha, China
Department of Psychiatry, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, New York, USA |
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Abstract: | Reading disability exhibited defects in different cognitive domains, including word reading fluency, word reading accuracy, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming and morphological awareness. To identify the genetic basis of Chinese reading disability, we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of the cognitive traits related to Chinese reading disability in 2284 unrelated Chinese children. Among the traits analyzed in the present GWAS, we detected one genome-wide significant association (p < 5 × 10−8) on word reading fluency for one SNP on 4p16.2, within EVC genes (rs6446395, p = 7.33 × 10−10). Rs6446395 also showed significant association with Chinese character reading accuracy (p = 2.95 × 10−4), phonological awareness (p = 7.11 × 10−3) and rapid automatized naming (p = 4.71 × 10−3), implying multiple effects of this variant. The eQTL data showed that rs6446395 affected EVC expression in the cerebellum. Gene-based analyses identified a gene (PRDM10) to be associated with word reading fluency at the genome-wide level. Our study discovered a new candidate susceptibility variant for reading ability and provided new insights into the genetics of developmental dyslexia in Chinese children. |
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Keywords: | Chinese dyslexia GWAS phonological awareness rapid automatized naming reading |
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