Psychological traits and cardiovascular disease risk factors in the Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study: a study of associations and common genes

[Truncated abstract] Despite current prevention practices, cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the leading cause of death worldwide. Although CVD is regarded as an adult disease, factors predisposing to CVD have shown to originate in early life. Psychological traits are an example of a potential predisposing factor that have been extensively examined in relation to adult CVD and have also shown to have origins in early life. It is plausible, therefore, that psychological traits may also be associated with the development of CVD risk from early life. To date, however, few studies have examined the association between psychological traits and CVD risk in childhood. In addition the biological mechanism underlying this association remains unclear. One hypothesis suggests that there may be a common genetic factor that influences an individual's risk of having both these traits. For example studies have shown that 12 to 42% of the overlap between psychological traits and CVD risk factors can be attributed to shared genetic factors. Therefore the aim of this thesis was to firstly examine whether psychological traits were associated with CVD risk factors throughout childhood and secondly, to examine the hypothesis of a pleiotrophic genetic variant as a mechanism that may, in part, explain this association. This thesis used data on participants from the Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study, an ongoing longitudinal prospective cohort of children. The original cohort consisted of 2,900 pregnant women, all of whom were recruited at approximately 18 weeks of gestation. Their babies were followed from recruitment at 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 10 and 14 years. Psychological traits and certain CVD risk factors were assessed from the ages of 5 to 14 years. As such this thesis focuses on this time period.