Skip to Main content Skip to Navigation
Journal articles

DNA methylation and body mass index from birth to adolescence: meta-analyses of epigenome-wide association studies

Florianne Vehmeijer 1 Leanne Küpers 2, 3 Gemma Sharp 2 Lucas Salas 4, 5, 6, 7 Samantha Lent 8 Dereje Jima 9 Gwen Tindula 10 Sarah Reese 11 Cancan Qi 12, 13 Olena Gruzieva 14, 15 Christian Page 16, 17 Faisal Rezwan 18, 19 Philip Melton 20, 21 Ellen Nohr 22, 23 Geòrgia Escaramís 7, 24, 25 Peter Rzehak 26 Anni Heiskala 27 Tong Gong 14 Samuli Tuominen 28 Lu Gao 29 Jason Ross 30 Anne Starling 31, 32 John Holloway 19 Paul Yousefi 2 Gunn Marit Aasvang 16 Lawrence Beilin 21 Anna Bergström 14, 15 Elisabeth Binder 33, 34 Leda Chatzi 35 Eva Corpeleijn 3, 12 Darina Czamara 33 Brenda Eskenazi 10 Susan Ewart 36 Natalia Ferre 37 Veit Grote 26 Dariusz Gruszfeld 38 Siri Håberg 16 Cathrine Hoyo 9 Karen Huen 10 Robert Karlsson 14 Inger Kull 14, 39 Jean-Paul Langhendries 40 Johanna Lepeule 41, 42 Maria Magnus 2, 16 Rachel Maguire 9, 43 Peter Molloy 30 Claire Monnereau 1 Trevor Mori 21 Emily Oken 44 Katri Räikkönen 28 Sheryl Rifas-Shiman 44 Carlos Ruiz-Arenas 5, 6, 7 Sylvain Sebert 27 Vilhelmina Ullemar 14 Elvira Verduci 45 Judith Vonk 3, 12 Cheng-Jian Xu 3, 12, 46, 47 Ivana Yang 31, 48, 49 Hongmei Zhang 50 Weiming Zhang 31 Wilfried Karmaus 50 Dana Dabelea 31, 32 Beverly Muhlhausler 51 Carrie Breton 29 Jari Lahti 28, 52 Catarina Almqvist 14, 53 Marjo-Riitta Jarvelin 27, 54, 55, 56 Berthold Koletzko 26 Martine Vrijheid 5, 6, 7 Thorkild Sørensen 2, 57 Rae-Chi Huang 21 Syed Hasan Arshad 19, 58 Wenche Nystad 16 Erik Melén 14, 39 Gerard Koppelman 59, 12 Stephanie London 11 Nina Holland 10 Mariona Bustamante 5, 6, 7 Susan Murphy 43 Marie-France Hivert 44, 60, 61 Andrea Baccarelli 62 Caroline Relton 2 Harold Snieder 12, 3 Vincent Jaddoe 1 Janine Felix 1
1 Erasmus MC - Erasmus University Medical Center [Rotterdam]
2 University of Bristol [Bristol]
3 University of Groningen [Groningen]
4 Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth
5 ISGlobal - Instituto de Salud Global - Institute For Global Health [Barcelona]
6 UPF - Universitat Pompeu Fabra [Barcelona]
7 CIBER de Epidemiología y Salud Pública (CIBERESP)
8 BUSM - Boston University School of Medicine
9 NC State - North Carolina State University [Raleigh]
10 University of California [Berkeley]
11 NIH - National Institutes of Health [Bethesda]
12 UMCG - University Medical Center Groningen [Groningen]
13 Groningen Research Institute for Asthma and COPD (GRIAC)
14 Karolinska Institutet [Stockholm]
15 Region Stockholm - Centre for Occupational and Environmental Medicine [Stockholm, Sweden]
16 NIPH - Norwegian Institute of Public Health [Oslo]
17 Oslo University Hospital [Oslo]
18 Cranfield University
19 University of Southampton
20 Curtin University [Perth]
21 UWA - The University of Western Australia
22 USN - University of South-Eastern Norway
23 SDU - University of Southern Denmark
24 University of Barcelona
25 Universitat de Girona [Girona]
26 Dr von Hauner Children's Hospital [Munich, Germany]
27 University of Oulu
28 University of Helsinki
29 USC - University of Southern California
30 CSIRO - North Ryde Site [New SouthWales, Australia]
31 CSPH - Colorado School of Public Health [Aurora, CO, USA]
32 University of Colorado Anschutz [Aurora]
33 Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry
34 Emory University School of Medicine
35 Keck School of Medicine [Los Angeles]
36 Michigan State University [East Lansing]
37 Universitat Rovira i Virgili
38 CMHI - Children’s Memorial Health Institute [Warsaw, Poland]
39 Sachs’ Children and Youth Hospital [Stockholm, Sweden]
40 Groupe santé CHC - Clinique Saint-Vincent [Liège-Rocourt,Belgium]
41 UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes
42 IAB - Institute for Advanced Biosciences / Institut pour l'Avancée des Biosciences (Grenoble)
43 Duke University Medical Center
44 HMS - Harvard Medical School [Boston]
45 University of Milan
46 HZI - Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research
47 TWINCORE - Centre for Experimental and Clinical Infection Research [Hanover]
48 UCCS - University of Colorado [Colorado Springs]
49 Jewish General Hospital
50 U of M - University of Memphis
51 CSIRO ADELAIDE AUS
52 University of Turku
53 Karolinska University Hospital [Stockholm]
54 Imperial College London
55 Brunel University London [Uxbridge]
56 Oulu University Hospital [Oulu]
57 KU - University of Copenhagen = Københavns Universitet
58 The David Hide Asthma and Allergy Research Centre [Southampton, UK]
59 Beatrix Children's Hospital [Groningen, Pays-Bas]
60 Massachusetts General Hospital [Boston]
61 UdeS - Université de Sherbrooke
62 Mailman School of Public Health Columbia University [New-York]
Abstract : Background DNA 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. Methods We 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. Results DNA 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). Conclusions There 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.
Keywords : Body mass index Childhood obesity DNA methylation Epigenetics
Document type :
Journal articles
Complete list of metadata
https://www.hal.inserm.fr/inserm-03179265
Contributor : Maïlys Barbagallo <>
Submitted on : Wednesday, March 24, 2021 - 11:12:31 AM
Last modification on : Thursday, May 27, 2021 - 6:28:02 PM

File

Vignette du document
s13073-020-00810-w.pdf
Publisher files allowed on an open archive

Identifiers

Collections

INSERM | IRSTEA | CNRS | INRAE | UGA

Citation

Florianne Vehmeijer, Leanne Küpers, Gemma Sharp, Lucas Salas, Samantha Lent, et al.. DNA methylation and body mass index from birth to adolescence: meta-analyses of epigenome-wide association studies. Genome Medicine, BioMed Central, 2020, 12 (1), pp.105. ⟨10.1186/s13073-020-00810-w⟩. ⟨inserm-03179265⟩

Export

BibTeX TEI DC DCterms EndNote

Share

Metrics

Record views

21

Files downloads

21