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Genetic and environmental correlations between obesity phenotypes and age at menarche

International Journal of Obesity volume 30, pages 1595–1600 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

Objective:

To assess the extent that the genetic and environmental factors contribute to the phenotypic correlations between obesity traits and age at menarche (AAM), and also to examine the influence of AAM on obesity in both pre- and postmenopausal women.

Methods:

Five hundred and twelve pedigrees with 2667 Caucasian female subjects from two to four generations were recruited. Fat mass and lean mass (both in kg) were measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry scanner. Body mass index (BMI) (kg/m2) was calculated. We performed bivariate quantitative genetic analyses in the total sample containing 2667 Caucasian women. We also selected 206 unrelated premenopausal women and 140 unrelated postmenopausal women from the total sample, and computed the respective phenotypic correlation between obesity and AAM in these two subgroups.

Results:

For fat mass, lean mass and BMI, we detected their significant negative genetic correlations with AAM after adjustment for significant covariates, which were −0.3170 (P<0.001), −0.1721 (P<0.05) and −0.3665 (P<0.001), respectively. However, their environmental correlations with AAM were all nonsignificant (P>0.05), ranging from −0.0016 to 0.0192. In the premenopausal subgroup, significant associations were observed between fat mass and AAM (ρ=−0.231, P<0.01) as well as between BMI and AAM (ρ=−0.257, P<0.01). In the postmenopausal subgroup, no such associations were observed.

Conclusion:

Our results for the first time suggested that significant phenotypic association between obesity phenotypes and AAM is mainly attributable to shared genetic rather than environmental factors, and AAM may have stronger effects on obesity phenotypes in pre- than in postmenopausal women.

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Acknowledgements

HWD was partially supported by grants from NIH and State of Nebraska. The study also benefited from 211 State Key Research Fund to Xi'an Jiaotong University.

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Author notes

  1. W Wang and L-J Zhao: These two authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education and Institute of Molecular Genetics, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, PR China

    W Wang & H-W Deng

  2. Osteoporosis Research Center and Department of Biomedical Sciences, Creighton University, Omaha, NE, USA

    W Wang, L-J Zhao, Y-Z Liu & R R Recker

  3. School of Medicine, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas City, MO, USA

    H-W Deng

  4. Laboratory of Molecular and Statistical Genetics, College of Life Sciences, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan, PR China

    H-W Deng

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  1. W Wang
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Correspondence to H-W Deng.

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Wang, W., Zhao, LJ., Liu, YZ. et al. Genetic and environmental correlations between obesity phenotypes and age at menarche. Int J Obes 30, 1595–1600 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ijo.0803322

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