Interaction between risk SNPs of Developmental Dyslexia and Parental Education on Reading Ability: Evidence for Differential-Susceptibility Theory

While genetic and environmental factors have been shown as predictors of children’s reading ability, the interaction effects of identified genetic risk susceptibility and specified environmental for reading ability have rarely been investigated. The current study assessed potential gene-environmental (G×E) interactions on reading ability in 1477 school-aged children. The gene-environment interactions on character recognition were investigated by an exploration 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. Results showed that rs281238 exhibits a significant interaction with PE on character recognition. Children with “T” genotype profited from high PE, whereas they performed worse in low PE environment, but “CC” genotype children were not malleable in different PE environments.