Education protects against coronary heart disease and stroke independently of cognitive function: evidence from Mendelian randomization

Background There is evidence that education protects against cardiovascular disease. However, it is not known whether such an effect is independent of cognition. Methods We performed two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses to investigate the effect of education and cognition, respectively, on risk of CHD and ischaemic stroke. Additionally, we used multivariable MR to adjust for the effects of cognition and education in the respective...