Smoking remains associated with education after controlling for social background and genetic factors in a study of 18 twin cohorts

Silventoinen, Karri and Piirtola, Maarit and Jelenkovic, Aline and Sund, Reijo and Tárnoki, Ádám Domonkos and Tárnoki, Dávid László and Medda, Emanuela and Nisticò, Lorenza and Toccaceli, Virgilia and Honda, Chika and Inui, Fujio and Tomizawa, Rie and Watanabe, Mikio and Sakai, Norio and Gatz, Margaret and Butler, David and Lee, Jooyeon and Lee, Soo Ji and Sung, Joohon and Franz, Carol E. and Kremen, William S. and Lyons, Michael J. and Derom, Catherine and Vlietinck, Robert F. and Roos, Ruth J. F. and Tynelius, Per and Rasmussen, Finn and Martin, Nicholas and Medland, Sarah E. and Montgomery, Grant W. and Brandt, Ingunn and Nilsen, Thomas S. and Harris, Jennifer R. and Tyler, Jessica and Hopper, John L. and Magnusson, Patrik K. E. and Pedersen, Nancy L. and DahlAslan, Anna K. and Ordoñana, Juan R. and Sánchez‐Romera, Juan F. and Colodro‐Conde, Lucia and Rebato, Esther and Zhang, Dongfeng and Pang, Zengchang and Tan, Qihua and Silberg, Judy L. and Maes, Hermine H. and Boomsma, Dorret and Sørensen, Thorkild I. A. and Korhonen, Tellervo and Kaprio, Jaakko (2022) Smoking remains associated with education after controlling for social background and genetic factors in a study of 18 twin cohorts. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS, 12. No.-13148. ISSN 2045-2322

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Abstract

We tested the causality between education and smoking using the natural experiment of discordant twin pairs allowing to optimally control for background genetic and childhood social factors. Data from 18 cohorts including 10,527 monozygotic (MZ) and same-sex dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs discordant for education and smoking were analyzed by linear fixed effects regression models. Within twin pairs, education levels were lower among the currently smoking than among the never smoking co-twins and this education difference was larger within DZ than MZ pairs. Similarly, education levels were higher among former smoking than among currently smoking co-twins, and this difference was larger within DZ pairs. Our results support the hypothesis of a causal effect of education on both current smoking status and smoking cessation. However, the even greater intra-pair differences within DZ pairs, who share only 50% of their segregating genes, provide evidence that shared genetic factors also contribute to these associations.

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