Genome-wide association study of vegetarianism in UK Biobank identifies association with VRK2

Prospective studies have observed differences in risks for several health outcomes when comparing meat-eaters and vegetarians, but the mechanisms underlying these differences remain uncertain. Identifying genetic factors related to vegetarianism may be valuable for assessing causality. We report a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of vegetarianism in 367,198 participants from UK Biobank. We identified one locus, rs10189138, near the vaccinia related kinase 2 (VRK2) gene, significantly associated with vegetarianism (β=0.153, p=3x10^-8). The associations between rs10189138 and 40 traits were calculated, and the rs10189138 T allele (MAF=0.12) was found to be significantly associated with greater height, after controlling the false discovery rate (FDR). Correlations between genetically predicted vegetarianism and 855 other genetically predicted traits were also calculated, and vegetarianism had significant positive genetic correlations with fluid intelligence and age at menarche, after controlling the FDR. Future research on an independent sample is needed to see if this GWAS result can be replicated.