Interaction between Risk Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms of Developmental Dyslexia and Parental Education on Reading Ability: Evidence for Differential Susceptibility Theory

Abstract

While genetic and environmental factors have been shown as predictors of children’s reading ability, the interaction effects of identified genetic risk susceptibility and the specified environment for reading ability have rarely been investigated. The current study assessed potential gene–environment (G×E) interactions on reading ability in 1477 school-aged children. The gene–environment interactions on character recognition were investigated by an exploratory analysis between the risk single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which were discovered by previous genome-wide association studies of developmental dyslexia (DD), and parental education (PE). The re-parameterized regression analysis suggested that this G×E interaction conformed to the strong differential susceptibility model. The results showed that rs281238 exhibits a significant interaction with PE on character recognition. Children with the “T” genotype profited from high PE, whereas they performed worse in low PE environments, but “CC” genotype children were not malleable in different PE environments. This study provided initial evidence for how the significant SNPs in developmental dyslexia GWA studies affect children’s reading performance by interacting with the environmental factor of parental education.