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  • Original Article
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Dairy intake associates with the IGF rs680 polymorphism to height variation in periadolescent children

Abstract

Background/Objectives:

Height is a classic polygenic trait, with a number of genes underlying its variation. We evaluated the prospect of gene-to-diet interactions in a children's cohort, for the insulin-like growth factor II (IGF) rs680 polymorphism and height variation.

Subjects/Methods:

We screened 795 periadolescent children (424 girls) aged 10–11 years old from the Gene and Diet Attica Investigation (GENDAI) pediatric cohort for the IGF rs680 polymorphism (rs680).

Results:

Children homozygous for the common allele (GG) were taller (148.9±7.9 cm) compared with those with the A allele (148.1±7.9 cm), after adjusting for age, sex and dairy intake (β±s.e.: 2.1±0.95, P=0.026). A trend for rs680 × dairy intake interaction was also revealed (P=0.09). Stratification by IGF rs680 genotype revealed positive significant (P=0.014) association between dairy product intake and height in A-allele children adjusted for the same confounders. A daily increase of four dairy servings was associated with a 0.4 cm increase in height. On grouping dairy intake into low (1.9±0.7 servings per day) and high dairy product consumption (4.4±1.5 servings per day), children with the A allele who were high dairy product consumers were taller compared with the low dairy product consumers (148.8±7.9 vs 147.4±7.7 cm, respectively, P=0.05).

Conclusions:

A higher consumption of dairy products is associated with increased height depending on the rs680 IGF2 genotype.

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Acknowledgements

We thank our participant children and their schools for their help and enthusiasm. We also thank the field investigators for their assistance in physical examination, biochemical analysis and nutritional assessment. The collection of the GENDAI cohort was funded by Coca-Cola Hellas.

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Correspondence to G V Dedoussis.

Additional information

Contributors: GVD planned the study and wrote the manuscript; MY and CP were responsible for dietary data collection; KPS performed the biochemical analyses; EL conducted genotyping. All authors were involved in interpretation of the results and revision of the manuscript.

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Dedoussis, G., Louizou, E., Papoutsakis, C. et al. Dairy intake associates with the IGF rs680 polymorphism to height variation in periadolescent children. Eur J Clin Nutr 64, 253–258 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/ejcn.2009.124

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