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Genetic predisposition to adiposity is associated with increased objectively assessed sedentary time in young children

International Journal of Obesity volume 42, pages 111–114 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Increased sedentariness has been linked to the growing prevalence of obesity in children, but some longitudinal studies suggest that sedentariness may be a consequence rather than a cause of increased adiposity. We used Mendelian randomization to examine the causal relations between body mass index (BMI) and objectively assessed sedentary time and physical activity in 3–8 year-old children from one Finnish and two Danish cohorts [NTOTAL=679]. A genetic risk score (GRS) comprised of 15 independent genetic variants associated with childhood BMI was used as the instrumental variable to test causal effects of BMI on sedentary time, total physical activity, and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA). In fixed effects meta-analyses, the GRS was associated with 0.05 SD/allele increase in sedentary time (P=0.019), but there was no significant association with total physical activity (beta=0.011 SD/allele, P=0.58) or MVPA (beta=0.001 SD/allele, P=0.96), adjusting for age, sex, monitor wear-time and first three genome-wide principal components. In two-stage least squares regression analyses, each genetically instrumented one unit increase in BMI z-score increased sedentary time by 0.47 SD (P=0.072). Childhood BMI may have a causal influence on sedentary time but not on total physical activity or MVPA in young children. Our results provide important insights into the regulation of movement behaviour in childhood.

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Acknowledgements

We specially want to express our thanks to the participant children and their parents that were part of the SKOT I, SKOT II and PANIC studies. This project was carried out as part of the research programme ‘Governing Obesity’ funded by the University of Copenhagen Excellence Programme for Interdisciplinary Research (www.go.ku.dk) and was supported by the Danish Diabetes Academy supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. The SKOT studies were supported by grants from The Danish Directorate for Food, Fisheries and Agri Business as part of the ‘Complementary and young child feeding (CYCF) – impact on short- and long-term development and health’ project. The PANIC study was funded by grants from Ministry of Social Affairs and Health of Finland, Ministry of Education and Culture of Finland, Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, Social Insurance Institution of Finland, Finnish Cultural Foundation, Juho Vainio Foundation, Foundation for Paediatric Research, Doctoral Programs in Public Health, Paavo Nurmi Foundation, Paulo Foundation, Diabetes Research Foundation, Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation, Finnish Foundation for Cardiovascular Research, Research Committee of the Kuopio University Hospital Catchment Area (State Research Funding), Kuopio University Hospital (previous state research funding (EVO), funding number 5031343), and the city of Kuopio. The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research is an independent research center at the University of Copenhagen partially funded by an unrestricted donation from the Novo Nordisk Foundation (http://metabol.ku.dk). The work of Soren Brage was funded by the UK Medical Research Council [MC_UU_12015/3]. Tuomas O Kilpeläinen was supported by the Danish Council for Independent Research (DFF – 1333-00124 and Sapere Aude program grant DFF – 1331-00730B).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, Section of Metabolic Genetics, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    T M Schnurr, Y Mahendran, C T Have, T O Kilpeläinen & T Hansen

  2. Institute of Biomedicine Physiology, School of Medicine, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland

    A Viitasalo, A-M Eloranta, J Väistö, M Atalay, L-P Lyytikäinen, V Lindi & T Lakka

  3. Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    C T Damsgaard, M F Hjorth, L B Christensen & K F Michaelsen

  4. Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    S Brage

  5. Department of Clinical Chemistry, Fimlab Laboratories and Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland

    L-P Lyytikäinen

  6. Department of Clinical Physiology and Nuclear Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Eastern Finland and Kuopio University Hospital, Kuopio, Finland

    T Lakka

  7. Kuopio Research Institute of Exercise Medicine, Kuopio, Finland

    T Lakka

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  1. T M Schnurr
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  2. A Viitasalo
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  7. J Väistö
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  8. M F Hjorth
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  9. L B Christensen
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  10. S Brage
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  11. M Atalay
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  12. L-P Lyytikäinen
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  13. V Lindi
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  14. T Lakka
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  16. T O Kilpeläinen
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  17. T Hansen
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Correspondence to T M Schnurr.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Schnurr, T., Viitasalo, A., Eloranta, AM. et al. Genetic predisposition to adiposity is associated with increased objectively assessed sedentary time in young children. Int J Obes 42, 111–114 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2017.235

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