Genetic susceptibility to cognitive decline following craniospinal irradiation for pediatric central nervous system tumors

Abstract

Abstract Background Survivors of pediatric central nervous system (CNS) tumors treated with craniospinal irradiation (CSI) exhibit long-term cognitive difficulties. Goals of this study were to evaluate longitudinal effects of candidate and novel genetic variants on cognitive decline following CSI. Methods Intelligence quotient (IQ), working memory (WM), and processing speed (PS) were longitudinally collected from patients treated with CSI (n = 241). Genotype-by-time interactions were evaluated using mixed-effects linear regression to identify common variants (minor allele frequency > 1%) associated with cognitive performance change. Novel variants associated with cognitive decline (P < 5 × 10−5) in individuals of European ancestry (n = 163) were considered replicated if they demonstrated consistent genotype-by-time interactions (P < .05) in individuals of non-European ancestries (n = 78) and achieved genome-wide statistical significance (P < 5 × 10−8) in a meta-analysis across ancestry groups. Results Participants were mostly males (65%) diagnosed with embryonal tumors (98%) at a median age of 8.3 years. Overall, 1150 neurocognitive evaluations were obtained (median = 5, range: 2–10 per participant). One of the five loci previously associated with cognitive outcomes in pediatric CNS tumors survivors demonstrated significant time-dependent IQ declines (PPARA rs6008197, P = .004). Two variants associated with IQ in the general population were associated with declines in IQ after Bonferroni correction (rs9348721, P = 1.7 × 10−5; rs31771, P = 7.8 × 10−4). In genome-wide analyses, we identified novel loci associated with accelerated declines in IQ (rs116595313, meta-P = 9.4 × 10−9), WM (rs17774009, meta-P = 4.2 × 10−9), and PS (rs77467524, meta-P = 1.5 × 10−8; rs17630683, meta-P = 2.0 × 10−8; rs73249323, meta-P = 3.1 × 10−8). Conclusions Inherited genetic variants involved in baseline cognitive functioning and novel susceptibility loci jointly influence the degree of treatment-associated cognitive decline in pediatric CNS tumor survivors.