
Saskia SelzamKing's College London | KCL · MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre
Saskia Selzam
Doctoral Student at the Social, Genetic, Developmental Psychiatry | King's College London
About
59
Publications
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Introduction
Saskia Selzam currently works at the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, King's College London. Saskia does research in Statistics, Genetic Epidemiology and Behavioural Science.
Additional affiliations
September 2016 - present
August 2016 - August 2016
June 2015 - September 2015
Education
October 2012 - June 2015
Publications
Publications (59)
A genome-wide polygenic score (GPS), derived from a 2013 genome-wide association study (N=127,000), explained 2% of the variance in total years of education (EduYears). In a follow-up study (N=329,000), a new EduYears GPS explains up to 4%. Here, we tested the association between this latest EduYears GPS and educational achievement scores at ages 7...
The parental feeding practices (PFPs) of excessive restriction of food intake (‘restriction’) and pressure to increase food consumption (‘pressure’) have been argued to causally influence child weight in opposite directions (high restriction causing overweight ; high pressure causing underweight ). However child weight could also ‘elicit’ PFPs. A n...
Recent advances in genomics are producing powerful DNA predictors of complex traits, especially cognitive abilities. Here, we leveraged summary statistics from the most recent genome-wide association studies of intelligence and educational attainment to build prediction models of general cognitive ability and educational achievement. To this end, w...
It has recently been proposed that a single dimension, called the p factor, can capture a person’s liability to mental disorder. Relevant to the p hypothesis, recent genetic research has found surprisingly high genetic correlations between pairs of psychiatric disorders. Here, for the first time, we compare genetic correlations from different metho...
Polygenic scores are a popular tool for prediction of complex traits. However, prediction estimates in samples of unrelated participants can include effects of population stratification, assortative mating and environmentally mediated parental genetic effects, a form of genotype-environment correlation (rGE). Comparing genome-wide polygenic score (...
We assess the UK Biobank (UKB) Polygenic Risk Score (PRS) Release, a set of PRSs for 28 diseases and 25 quantitative traits that has been made available on the individuals in UKB, using a unified pipeline for PRS evaluation. We also release a benchmarking software tool to enable like-for-like performance evaluation for different PRSs for the same d...
Background
Insomnia with short sleep duration has been postulated as more severe than that accompanied by normal/long sleep length. While the short duration subtype is considered to have greater genetic influence than the other subtype, no studies have addressed this question. This study aimed to compare these subtypes in terms of: (1) the heritabi...
We present and assess the UK Biobank (UKB) Polygenic Risk Score (PRS) Release, a set of PRSs for 28 diseases and 25 quantitative traits being made available on the individuals in UKB. We also release a benchmarking software tool to enable like-for-like performance evaluation for different PRSs for the same disease or trait. Extensive benchmarking s...
Importance
The number of words a child produces (expressive vocabulary) and understands (receptive vocabulary) change rapidly during infancy and toddlerhood, partially due to genetic factors. However, the genetic architecture underlying vocabulary development and association patterns with later-life outcomes, have not yet been fully characterised....
Risk-guided intervention in the US, informed by the pooled cohort equations (PCE) risk calculator, is the accepted practice for prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD). We recently showed that a polygenic risk score (PRS, summarising common genetic risk) can be integrated with PCE into an integrated risk tool (IRT) and we valid...
Background
One goal of the DNA revolution is to predict problems in order to prevent them. We tested here if the prediction of behaviour problems from genome‐wide polygenic scores (GPS) can be improved by creating composites across ages and across raters and by using a multi‐GPS approach that includes GPS for adult psychiatric disorders as well as...
Associations between exposures and outcomes reported in epidemiological studies are typically unadjusted for genetic confounding. We propose a two-stage approach for estimating the degree to which such observed associations can be explained by genetic confounding. First, we assess attenuation of exposure effects in regressions controlling for incre...
Preterm birth is an extreme environmental stress associated with an increased risk of later cognitive dysfunction and mental health problems. However, the extent to which preterm birth is modulated by genetic variation remains largely unclear. Here, we test for an interaction effect between psychiatric polygenic risk and gestational age at birth on...
The predictive utility of polygenic scores is increasing, and many polygenic scoring methods are available, but it is unclear which method performs best. This study evaluates the predictive utility of polygenic scoring methods within a reference-standardized framework, which uses a common set of variants and reference-based estimates of linkage dis...
Background - There is considerable interest in whether genetic data can be used to improve standard cardiovascular disease risk calculators, as the latter are routinely used in clinical practice to manage preventative treatment.
Methods - Using the UK Biobank (UKB) resource, we developed our own polygenic risk score (PRS) for coronary artery diseas...
The American College of Cardiology / American Heart Association pooled cohort equations tool (ASCVD-PCE) is currently recommended to assess 10-year risk for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD). ASCVD-PCE does not currently include genetic risk factors. Polygenic risk scores (PRSs) have been shown to offer a powerful new approach to measu...
Background
Integration of functional genomic annotations when estimating polygenic risk scores (PRS) can provide insight into aetiology and improve risk prediction. This study explores the predictive utility of gene expression risk scores (GeRS), calculated using imputed gene expression and transcriptome-wide association study (TWAS) results.
Meth...
Background
One goal of the DNA revolution is to predict problems in order to prevent them. We tested here if the prediction of behaviour problems from genome-wide polygenic scores (GPS) can be improved by creating composites across ages and across raters and by using a multi-GPS approach that includes GPS for adult psychiatric disorders as well as...
Objectives:
Individual adolescent psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) are associated with schizophrenia risk factors. As DSM-5 schizophrenia requires the co-occurrence of at least two psychotic symptoms, we investigated whether co-occurring adolescent PLEs have stronger associations with schizophrenia risk factors, lower quality of life and function...
Background
Integration of functional genomic annotations when estimating polygenic risk scores (PRS) can provide insight into aetiology and improve risk prediction. This study explores the predictive utility of gene expression risk scores (GeRS), calculated using imputed gene expression and transcriptome-wide association study (TWAS) results.
Meth...
Polygenic scores are increasingly powerful predictors of educational achievement. It is unclear, however, how sets of polygenic scores, which partly capture environmental effects, perform jointly with sets of environmental measures, which are themselves heritable, in prediction models of educational achievement. Here, for the first time, we systema...
The genetic background of childhood body mass index (BMI), and the extent to which the well-known associations of childhood BMI with adult diseases are explained by shared genetic factors, are largely unknown. We performed a genome-wide association study meta-analysis of BMI in 61,111 children aged between 2 and 10 years. Twenty-five independent lo...
Background
There is considerable interest in whether genetic data can be used to improve standard cardiovascular disease risk calculators, as the latter are routinely used in clinical practice to manage preventative treatment.
Methods
This research has been conducted using the UK Biobank (UKB) resource. We developed our own polygenic risk score (PR...
Purpose
The ability to identify children early in development who are at substantial risk for language/literacy difficulties would have great benefit both for the children and for the educational and therapeutic institutions that serve them. Information that is relatively easily available prior to the age of 3 years, such as late talking, family hi...
Polygenic scores are increasingly powerful predictors of educational achievement. It is unclear, however, how sets of polygenic scores, which partly capture environmental effects, perform jointly with sets of environmental measures, which are themselves heritable, in prediction models of educational achievement.
Here, for the first time, we systema...
The Twins Early Development Study (TEDS) is a longitudinal twin study that recruited over 16,000 twin-pairs born between 1994 and 1996 in England and Wales through national birth records. More than 10,000 of these families are still engaged in the study. TEDS was and still is a representative sample of the population in England and Wales. Rich cogn...
Background
Diverse behaviour problems in childhood correlate phenotypically, suggesting a general dimension of psychopathology that has been called the p factor. The shared genetic architecture between childhood psychopathology traits also supports a genetic p. This study systematically investigates the manifestation of this common dimension across...
Polygenic scores are a popular tool for prediction of complex traits. However, prediction estimates in samples of unrelated participants can include effects of population stratification, assortative mating, and environmentally mediated parental genetic effects, a form of genotype-environment correlation (rGE). Comparing genome-wide polygenic score...
Recent advances in genomics are producing powerful DNA predictors of complex traits, especially cognitive abilities. Here, we leveraged summary statistics from the most recent genome-wide association studies of intelligence and educational attainment, with highly genetically correlated traits, to build prediction models of general cognitive ability...
The Twins Early Development Study (TEDS) is a longitudinal twin study that recruited over 16,000 twin pairs born between 1994 and 1996 in England and Wales through national birth records. More than 10,000 of these families are still engaged in the study. TEDS was and still is a representative sample of the population in England and Wales. Rich cogn...
Objective
Countless associations between risk factors and outcomes are reported in epidemiological research, but often without estimating the contribution from genetics. However most outcomes and risk factors are substantially heritable, and genetic influences can confound these associations. Here we propose a two-stage approach for evaluating the...
Background: Diverse behaviour problems in childhood correlate phenotypically, suggesting a general dimension of psychopathology that has been called the p factor. The shared genetic architecture between childhood psychopathology traits also supports a genetic p. This study systematically investigates the manifestation of this common dimension acros...
Genome-wide polygenic scores (GPS) can be used to predict individual genetic risk and resilience. For example, a GPS for years of education (EduYears) explains substantial variance in cognitive traits such as general cognitive ability and educational achievement. Personality traits are also known to contribute to individual differences in education...
Neuropsychiatric disease has polygenic determinants but is often precipitated by environmental pressures, including adverse perinatal events. However, the way in which genetic vulnerability and early-life adversity interact remains obscure. We hypothesised that the extreme environmental stress of prematurity would promote neuroanatomic abnormality...
The parental feeding practices (PFPs) of excessive restriction of food intake (‘restriction’) and pressure to increase food consumption (‘pressure’) have been argued to causally influence child weight in opposite directions (high restriction causing overweight; high pressure causing underweight). However child weight could also ‘elicit’ PFPs. A nov...
The parental feeding practices (PFPs) of excessive restriction of food intake ('restriction') and pressure to increase food consumption ('pressure') have been argued to causally influence child weight in opposite directions (high restriction causing overweight; high pressure causing underweight). However child weight could also 'elicit' PFPs. A nov...
Background: Neuropsychiatric disease has polygenic determinants but is often precipitated by environmental pressures, including adverse perinatal events. However, the way in which genetic vulnerability and early-life adversity interact remains obscure. Preterm birth is associated with abnormal brain development and psychiatric disease. We hypothesi...
The aetiology of individual differences in educational attainment and occupational status includes genetic as well as environmental factors1–5 and can change as societies change3,6,7. The extent of genetic influence on these social outcomes can be viewed as an index of success in achieving meritocratic values of equality of opportunity by rewarding...
On average, students attending selective schools outperform their non-selective counterparts in national exams. These differences are often attributed to value added by the school, as well as factors schools use to select pupils, including ability, achievement and, in cases where schools charge tuition fees or are located in affluent areas, socioec...
It has recently been proposed that a single dimension, called the p factor, can capture a person’s liability to mental disorder. Relevant to the p hypothesis, recent genetic research has found surprisingly high genetic correlations between pairs of psychiatric disorders. Here, for the first time we compare genetic correlations from different method...
For most complex traits, DNA-based heritability (‘SNP heritability’) is roughly half that of twin-based heritability. A previous report from the Twins Early Development Study suggested that this heritability gap is much greater for childhood behaviour problems than for other domains. If true, this finding is important because SNP heritability, not...
Molecular Psychiatry publishes work aimed at elucidating biological mechanisms underlying psychiatric disorders and their treatment
It is now possible to create individual-specific genetic scores, called genome-wide polygenic scores (GPS). We used a GPS for years of education (EduYears) to predict reading performance assessed at UK National Curriculum Key Stages 1 (age 7), 2 (age 12) and 3 (age 14) and on reading tests administered at ages 7 and 12 in a UK sample of 5,825 unrel...
Individuals differ in their level of general anxiety as well as in their level of anxiety towards specific activities, such as mathematics and spatial tasks. Both specific anxieties correlate moderately with general anxiety, but the aetiology of their association remains unexplored. Moreover, the factor structure of spatial anxiety is to date unkno...
Significance
Spatial ability is a strong predictor of several important outcomes, including success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects and careers. This ability is widely believed to be multifactorial, with numerous components and subdomains, such as “mental rotation,” “scanning,” and “mechanical reasoning.” This l...
We document the growth in published papers on behavioral genetics for 5-year intervals from 1960 through 2014. We used 1861 papers published in Behavior Genetics to train our search strategy which, when applied to Ovid PsychINFO, selected more than 45,000 publications. Five trends stand out: (1) the number of behavioral genetic publications has gro...
Spatial abilities–defined broadly as the capacity to manipulate mental representations of objects and the relations between them–have been studied widely, but with little agreement reached concerning their nature or structure. Two major putative spatial abilities are " mental rotation " (rotating mental models) and " visualisation " (complex manipu...