Dyslexia-Related Loci Are Significantly Associated With Language And Literacy In Chinese-English Bilingual Hong Kong Chinese Twins

Abstract

Abstract A recent genome-wide association study on dyslexia in 51,800 affected European adults and 1,087,070 controls detected 42 genome-wide significant SNPs. Among the 42 SNPs, rs2624839 further showed a significant association with quantitative reading fluency in a Chinese replication cohort. This study aimed at replicating the association between loci near the reported dyslexia associated rs2624839 and quantitative measurements of language and literacy in a unique cohort of bilingual Hong Kong Chinese twins who speak Chinese as first language and English as second language. To investigate the region near dyslexia associated rs2624839, proxy SNPs (rs1005678, rs12632110, and rs12494414) were tested at the population level (n = 308) and the within-twin level (n = 344, 172 twin pairs). At population level, significant associations with Chinese and English vocabulary knowledge were observed for all the three SNPs (p < .05). The strongest significant association after multiple testing correction was between rs12494414 and English vocabulary knowledge at the within-twin level (p = .004). We also demonstrated a trend of associations with English word reading and spelling, but larger sample size study is required to validate our findings. However, there was no significant associations with Chinese word reading and spelling. Our result suggests an important contribution of dyslexia-associated SNPs to language and literacy in Chinese and English in bilingual Chinese twins.