Euan Angus Young

euantheyoung.bsky.social

07 October 2026 08:35

Rather than a trade-off, these variants may have persisted due to the disease’s late age at onset and weak selection, but the role of evolutionary mismatches should also be tested. By integrating different methods, we provide a robust framework that future studies could extend to other diseases.

Euan Angus Young

euantheyoung.bsky.social

07 October 2026 08:35

Finally, we searched for “local” regions shared between the traits that were missed in our genome-wide analyses. But this revealed only three regions shared between just age at menarche and ER+ breast cancer risk, suggesting largely independent genetic architectures.

Euan Angus Young

euantheyoung.bsky.social

07 October 2026 08:35

And did this reveal the predicted genetic trade-offs?? Well, no. In fact, reassuringly, our estimates were fairly consistent with our first results, reaffirming that there was little evidence for a genetic trade-off shaping ER+ breast cancer risk.

Euan Angus Young

euantheyoung.bsky.social

07 October 2026 08:35

BUT, these traits are highly influenced by social and environmental factors that may have biased our genetic correlations. To overcome this, we used family GWAS data, which leverages the random chance of children inheriting different alleles to remove this confounding.

Euan Angus Young

euantheyoung.bsky.social

07 October 2026 08:35

We first used Lifelines biobank data and the latest and largest available GWAS data, and found no evidence in favor of our hypothesis across both of these approaches. (Our analysis of GWAS data had much more power!)