Fig. 1.

Schematic diagram of the study design. a Schematic diagram illustrating the polygenic score association analyses. We generated polygenic scores in the UK Biobank for autism and tested the association between the polygenic scores and childhood trauma scores and SSBI scores. Additionally, to gain deeper insights, we also tested association for individual trauma and SSBI items. As a negative control, we tested for association between Alzheimer’s polygenic scores and both childhood trauma and SSBI scores. We did not test for association between individual items and Alzheimer’s polygenic scores as they were not significantly associated with childhood trauma and SSBI scores. b Schematic diagram illustrating the mediation analyses and moderation analyses conducted. Mediation analyses were conducted to investigate if depression and three social factors mediate the association between autism polygenic scores and SSBI scores. Moderation (interaction) analyses were conducted to investigate if sex and childhood trauma influenced the strength of the relationship between autism polygenic scores and SSBI scores