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Heritability of body mass index in pre-adolescence, young adulthood and late adulthood

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Abstract

Increased body mass index (BMI) is a worldwide health issue. Individual differences in the susceptibility to increased BMI could be related to genes or environment. We performed a systematic review of genetic studies on BMI in pre-adolescence, young adulthood and late adulthood. We searched PubMed and EMBASE with heritability, body mass index, BMI, weight, height, anthropometry and twins as search terms. Studies reporting intra-pair correlations of healthy twin pairs that were raised together were included. This resulted in the inclusion of 8,179 monozygotic (MZ) and 9,977 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs from twelve published studies in addition to individual participant data for 629 MZ and 594 DZ pairs from four twin registries. Structural equation modelling with intra-pair twin correlations showed that the heritability of BMI remained high over all age categories ranging from 61 % (95 % CI 54–64 %) to 80 % (95 % CI 76–81 %) for male and female subjects combined, while unique environmental influences increased from 14 % (95 % CI 13–15 %) to 40 % (95 % CI 37–43 %) with increasing age. Heritability of BMI remains consistently high over different age categories. Environmental changes over time do not seem to have as big a relative impact on an individual’s weight as previously reported, suggesting a mainly genetic influence on variation in BMI over the years.

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Abbreviations

A:

Additive genetic influences

BMI:

Body mass index

C:

Common environmental influences

CAATSA:

Carolina African American Twin Study of Aging

DZ:

Dizygotic

E:

Unique environmental influences

EFPTS:

East Flanders Prospective Twin Study

IPD:

Individual participant data

LLTS:

Leuven Longitudinal Twin Study

MTR:

Murcia Twin Register

MZ:

Monozygotic

NTR:

Netherlands Twin Registry

TEDS:

Twins Early Development Study

WHO:

World Health Organisation

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Raymond Timmins of the Department of Public Health at the University of Birmingham (UK) for gathering a large part of the papers. This research was funded by the Birmingham Children’s Hospital Research Foundation (BCHRF102f). The MTR is supported by the Seneca Foundation (08633/PHCS/08) and MICINN (PSI11560-2009). LLTS is supported by the Research Fund Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (OT/86/80), National Bank of Belgium, Fund for Medical Research Belgium (3.0038.82, 3.0008.90, 3.0098.91), and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (860823). This study was previously published in abstract form in Twin Research and Human Genetics (2010): 13(3), p279.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Unit of Urologic and Genetic Epidemiology, Department of Public Health, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK

    Cassandra Nan, Claire Warner, Tom Fowler & Maurice Zeegers

  2. Biostatistics Group, Department of Public Health, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Boliang Guo & Jonathan Deeks

  3. Mental Health Commissioning and Service Redesign, NHS, Cambridgeshire, UK

    Claire Warner

  4. Department of Public Health, Heart of Birmingham Teaching PCT, Birmingham, UK

    Tom Fowler

  5. School of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Timothy Barrett

  6. Department of Biological Psychology, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Dorret Boomsma

  7. Health and Exercise Science and Colorado School of Public Health, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, United States of America

    Tracy Nelson

  8. Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC, United States of America

    Keith Whitfield

  9. Department of Kinesiology, Faculty of Kinesiology and Rehabilitation Sciences, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Gaston Beunen, Martine Thomis & Hermine Hendrik Maes

  10. Department of Human and Molecular Genetics, Virginia Institute of Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, United States of America

    Hermine Hendrik Maes

  11. Department of Human Genetics, University Hospital Gasthuisberg, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Catherine Derom

  12. Area of Psychobiology, University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain

    Juan Ordoñana

  13. Department of Complex Genetics, Cluster of Genetics and Cell Biology, Nutrition and Toxicology Research Institute Maastricht, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Maurice Zeegers

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  1. Cassandra Nan
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  2. Boliang Guo
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  3. Claire Warner
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  6. Dorret Boomsma
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  7. Tracy Nelson
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  8. Keith Whitfield
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  13. Juan Ordoñana
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  15. Maurice Zeegers
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Correspondence to Cassandra Nan.

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Nan, C., Guo, B., Warner, C. et al. Heritability of body mass index in pre-adolescence, young adulthood and late adulthood. Eur J Epidemiol 27, 247–253 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-012-9678-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-012-9678-6

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