Genome-wide approach identifies a novel gene-maternal pre-pregnancy BMI interaction on preterm birth.

ABSTRACT: Preterm birth (PTB) contributes significantly to infant mortality and morbidity with lifelong impact. Few robust genetic factors of PTB have been identified. Such 'missing heritability' may be partly due to gene × environment interactions (G × E), which is largely unexplored. Here we conduct genome-wide G × E analyses of PTB in 1,733 African-American women (698 mothers of PTB; 1,035 of term birth) from the Boston Birth Cohort. We show that maternal COL24A1 variants have a significant genome-wide interaction with maternal pre-pregnancy overweight/obesity on PTB risk, with rs11161721 (P_{G × E}=1.8 × 10^-8; empirical P_{G × E}=1.2 × 10^-8) as the top hit. This interaction is replicated in African-American mothers (P_{G × E}=0.01) from an independen

SUBMITTER: Hong X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5472707 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature