Increasing heritability of BMI and stronger associations with the FTO gene over childhood
Haworth, C. and Carnell, S. and Meaburn, Emma L. and Davis, O.S.P. and Plomin, R. and Wardle, J. (2008) Increasing heritability of BMI and stronger associations with the FTO gene over childhood. Obesity 16 (12), pp. 2663-2668. ISSN 1930-7381.
Abstract
The growing evidence of health risks associated with the rise in childhood obesity adds to the urgency of understanding the determinants of BMI. Twin analyses on repeated assessments of BMI in a longitudinal sample of >7,000 children indicated that the genetic influence on BMI becomes progressively stronger, with heritability increasing from 0.48 at age 4 to 0.78 at age 11. In the same large twin sample, the association between a common variant in the FTO gene and BMI increased in parallel with the rise in heritability, going from R(2) < 0.001 at age 4 to R(2) = 0.01 at age 11. These findings suggest that expression of FTO may become stronger throughout childhood. Increases in heritability may also be due to children increasingly selecting environments correlated with their genetic propensities.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences |
| Research Centres and Institutes: | Educational Neuroscience, Centre for, Brain and Cognitive Development, Centre for (CBCD) |
| Depositing User: | Emma Meaburn |
| Date Deposited: | 15 May 2013 08:54 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 17:03 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/6752 |
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