rs11926588 (SATB1-AS1): Educational Attainment

Key takeaways

• rs11926588 in the SATB1-AS1 locus is one of 3,952 genome-wide significant variants for educational attainment identified in a study of approximately 3 million individuals
• Together, all significant variants from this study explain 12-16% of the variation in years of schooling completed
• Direct genetic effects account for roughly half of the polygenic association with educational attainment, suggesting some association operates through family-mediated pathways
• No non-additive (dominance) genetic effects on educational attainment reached genome-wide significance, supporting a primarily additive genetic model
• The educational attainment polygenic index from this study contributes predictive power for ten separate diseases

What the research says A genome-wide association study of educational attainment in approximately 3 million individuals identified 3,952 approximately uncorrelated genome-wide significant variants, including rs11926588 in the SATB1-AS1 locus. The polygenic index built from all significant variants explains 12-16% of variance in educational attainment and adds predictive power for ten diseases beyond educational attainment itself. Family-based analyses show that direct genetic effects account for roughly half the magnitude of the polygenic index association, and mate-pair polygenic index correlations are too large to be explained by phenotypic assortment alone, implying additional assortment on polygenic-index-associated factors.

Reported associations

• Educational attainment: rs11926588 reached genome-wide significance for years of schooling completed in a meta-analysis of approximately 3 million individuals; the polygenic index built from all 3,952 significant variants explains 12-16% of educational attainment variance
• Disease risk prediction (polygenic context): the educational attainment polygenic index from this study contributes to risk prediction for ten diseases; the individual contribution of this locus to those disease associations is not reported separately in the available study text

Evidence quality The study reporting this association analyzed approximately 3 million individuals (N = 3,037,499 for the autosomal analysis), representing one of the largest GWAS of any complex trait to date. The mean chi-squared statistic for qualifying SNPs was 4.90, well above the baseline of 1.0, indicating strong genome-wide statistical signal. This EA4 study is the fourth in a series of progressively larger educational attainment GWAS, following prior studies of 127,000 to 1.1 million participants, and identified nearly three times as many significant loci as the prior EA3 study. No specific effect size for rs11926588 is reported in the available text; the study's large scale reduces winner's curse bias in individual effect estimates. A dominance GWAS conducted in 2,574,253 individuals found no genome-wide significant SNPs, effectively ruling out common non-additive genetic effects of notable magnitude on educational attainment.

Lifestyle considerations No lifestyle considerations on file for this variant.