Polygenic Score for Cigarette Smoking is Associated with Ever Electronic-Cigarette Use in a College-Aged Sample.

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND AIMS\nElectronic cigarette use has escalated rapidly in recent years, particularly among youth. Little is known about the genetic influences on e-cigarette use. This study aimed to determine whether genetic risk for regular use of combustible cigarettes or for number of cigarettes smoked per day confers risk for ever e-cigarette use or frequency of e-cigarette use.\n\n\nDESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, AND MEASUREMENTS\nWe used data from 9,541 young adults from the Spit for Science longitudinal cohort study (2011-2019). Polygenic scores (PGS) of regular combustible cigarette use (PGS-RCU) and cigarettes per day (PGS-CPD) were constructed using summary statistics from the two largest available genome-wide association study (GWAS) meta-analysis of European ancestry and East Asian ancestry of combustible cigarette use and used to test whether the PGS of RCU or CPD predicted lifetime e-cigarette use and frequency of past 30-day e-cigarette use in a diverse sample of young adults of African (AFR), Admixed American (AMR), East Asian (EAS), European (EUR), and South Asian (SAS) ancestry.\n\n\nFINDINGS\nThe PGS-RCU was associated with lifetime e-cigarette use in the EUR sample (odds ratio (OR):1.27, 95% confidence interval (CI):1.19-1.36, p=7.53x10-12 ) but not in the other subsamples (ps>0.12). This association remained significant after excluding regular combustible cigarette smokers (OR:1.21, 95% CI:1.12-1.31, p=3.36x10-6 ). There was no statistically significant association between PGS-CPD and lifetime e-cigarette use and neither the PGS-RCU nor the PGS-CPD were associated with frequency of e-cigarette use in the past 30 days in any of the subsamples.\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nGenetic factors associated with regular combustible cigarettes use appear to be associated with ever e-cigarette use in young adults. We did not find evidence for shared genetic factors influencing heaviness of use of combustible cigarettes and current e-cigarette use frequency.