Dataset Information

Genome-wide methylation data improves dissection of the effect of smoking on body mass index.

ABSTRACT: Variation in obesity-related traits has a genetic basis with heritabilities between 40 and 70%. While the global obesity pandemic is usually associated with environmental changes related to lifestyle and socioeconomic changes, most genetic studies do not include all relevant environmental covariates, so the genetic contribution to variation in obesity-related traits cannot be accurately assessed. Some studies have described interactions between a few individual genes linked to obesity and environmental variables but there is no agreement on their total contribution to differences between individuals. Here we compared self-reported smoking data and a methylation-based proxy to explore the effect of smoking and genome-by-smoking interactions on obesity related traits from a genome-wide perspective to estimate the amount of variance they explain. Our results indicate that exploiting omic measures can improve models for complex traits such as obesity and can be used as a substitute for, or jointly with, environmental records to better understand causes of disease.

SUBMITTER: Amador C

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8428545 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Genome-wide methylation data improves dissection of the effect of smoking on body mass index.

Amador Carmen C Zeng Yanni Y Barber Michael M Walker Rosie M RM Campbell Archie A McIntosh Andrew M AM Evans Kathryn L KL Porteous David J DJ Hayward Caroline C Wilson James F JF Navarro Pau P Haley Chris S CS

PLoS genetics 20210909 9

Variation in obesity-related traits has a genetic basis with heritabilities between 40 and 70%. While the global obesity pandemic is usually associated with environmental changes related to lifestyle and socioeconomic changes, most genetic studies do not include all relevant environmental covariates, so the genetic contribution to variation in obesity-related traits cannot be accurately assessed. Some studies have described interactions between a few individual genes linked to obesity and enviro ...[more]

PMID: 34499657

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundDNA methylation has been shown to be associated with adiposity in adulthood. However, whether similar DNA methylation patterns are associated with childhood and adolescent body mass index (BMI) is largely unknown. More insight into this relationship at younger ages may have implications for future prevention of obesity and its related traits.MethodsWe examined whether DNA methylation in cord blood and whole blood in childhood and adolescence was associated with BMI in the age range from 2 to 18 years using both cross-sectional and longitudinal models. We performed meta-analyses of epigenome-wide association studies including up to 4133 children from 23 studies. We examined the overlap of findings reported in previous studies in children and adults with those in our analyses and calculated enrichment.ResultsDNA methylation at three CpGs (cg05937453, cg25212453, and cg10040131), each in a different age range, was associated with BMI at Bonferroni significance, P < 1.06 × 10-7, with a 0.96 standard deviation score (SDS) (standard error (SE) 0.17), 0.32 SDS (SE 0.06), and 0.32 BMI SDS (SE 0.06) higher BMI per 10% increase in methylation, respectively. DNA methylation at nine additional CpGs in the cross-sectional childhood model was associated with BMI at false discovery rate significance. The strength of the associations of DNA methylation at the 187 CpGs previously identified to be associated with adult BMI, increased with advancing age across childhood and adolescence in our analyses. In addition, correlation coefficients between effect estimates for those CpGs in adults and in children and adolescents also increased. Among the top findings for each age range, we observed increasing enrichment for the CpGs that were previously identified in adults (birth Penrichment = 1; childhood Penrichment = 2.00 × 10-4; adolescence Penrichment = 2.10 × 10-7).ConclusionsThere were only minimal associations of DNA methylation with childhood and adolescent BMI. With the advancing age of the participants across childhood and adolescence, we observed increasing overlap with altered DNA methylation loci reported in association with adult BMI. These findings may be compatible with the hypothesis that DNA methylation differences are mostly a consequence rather than a cause of obesity.

Dataset Information

Genome-wide methylation data improves dissection of the effect of smoking on body mass index.

Publications

Genome-wide methylation data improves dissection of the effect of smoking on body mass index.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets