Uncovering the Heritable Components of Multimorbidities and Disease Trajectories: A Nationwide Cohort Study

Abstract

Quantifying the contribution of genetics and environmental effects on disease initiation and progression, as well as the shared genetics of different diseases, is vital for the understanding of the disease etiology of multimorbidities. In this study, we leverage nationwide Danish registries to provide a granular atlas of the genetic origin of disease phenotypes for a cohort of all Danes 1978-2018 with partially known pedigree (n = 6.3 million). We estimate the heritability and genetic correlation between thousands of disease phenotypes using a novel approach that can be scaled to nationwide data. Our findings confirm the importance of genetics for a number of known associations and increase the resolution of heritability by adding numerous novel associations, some of which point to shared biologically origin of different phenotypes. We also establish the heritability of disease trajectories and the importance of sex-specific genetic contributions.