Researchers Identify Genetic Overlap Between Dyslexia and ADHD

According to a study, dyslexia and ADHD are unique from developmental and mental health diseases like autism, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia since they share many genes and frequently co-occur in individuals.

Genetic Links

The University of Edinburgh is leading the study, which is the first to investigate the genetic connections between neurodevelopmental and psychiatric features and dyslexia, a condition that affects 10% of the population.

According to experts, the results can be used to customize educational, job, and wellness support systems for individuals with dyslexia or ADHD.

The research contributes to the comprehension of the biology behind both dyslexia, a condition characterized by difficulties with reading and spelling, and ADHD, a condition linked to impulsivity, hyperactivity, and problems concentrating.

Public Datasets

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh examined large public anonymized datasets of genetic data on ten neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, as well as dyslexia genetic statistics from a study of approximately one million people in collaboration with 23andMe, a genomics and biotechnology company.

They employed a statistical method to identify clusters of genetically linked dyslexia features, as well as 10 neurodevelopmental and psychiatric traits such as ADHD, anorexia nervosa, and Tourette syndrome.

Genetic Regions

They used more comprehensive studies to discover particular genetic areas that overlap with dyslexia and ADHD.

Among the ten psychiatric features examined, five genetically connected clusters known as latent genomic components were discovered.

ADHD was shown to be more significantly associated with attention and learning issues than with neurodevelopmental features such as autism and Tourette syndrome.

Follow-up analysis of the attention and learning problems component revealed 49 genomic areas and 174 genes shared by dyslexia and ADHD, including 40 regions and 121 genes that had not before been discovered.

This is the first time that genetic links to dyslexia have been studied in the context of psychiatric traits. In the future, other learning difficulties such as dyscalculia or dyspraxia should be included to allow for a more nuanced understanding of the relationships between them.”

Austėja Čiulkinytė, PhD Student and Study Lead, University of Edinburgh

Michelle Luciano, Professor, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, added, “By studying many related behaviours together we are able boost the statistical power for gene discovery.”