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. 2005 Dec;116(6):1235-41.
doi: 10.1016/j.jaci.2005.09.016. Epub 2005 Nov 8.

Genetic pleiotropy between asthma and obesity in a community-based sample of twins

Teal S Hallstrand  1 , Mary E Fischer, Mark M Wurfel, Niloofar Afari, Dedra Buchwald, Jack Goldberg
Affiliations

Genetic pleiotropy between asthma and obesity in a community-based sample of twins

Teal S Hallstrand et al. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2005 Dec.

Abstract

Background: Asthma and obesity are common conditions that are strongly associated. This association might be due to shared genetic or environmental causes.

Objective: We sought to determine whether a shared genetic cause is responsible for the association between asthma and obesity and to estimate the magnitude of shared genetic cause.

Methods: The analyses were performed with 1001 monozygotic and 383 dizygotic same-sex twin pairs within the University of Washington Twin Registry. The presence of asthma was determined by self-report of a physician diagnosis of asthma, and body mass index (BMI) was calculated by using self-reported height and weight. Obesity was defined as a BMI of 30 or greater. The association between asthma and BMI was assessed by means of mixed-effects ordinal regression. Twin correlations examined the association of asthma and obesity. Univariate and bivariate structural equation models estimated the components of variance attributable to genetic and environmental effects.

Results: A strong association between asthma and BMI was identified in the sample population (P < .001). Substantial heritability was detected for asthma (53%) and obesity (77%), which is indicative of additive genetic influences on each disorder. The best-fitting model of shared components of variance indicated that 8% of the genetic component of obesity is shared with asthma.

Conclusion: The covariation between obesity and asthma is predominantly caused by shared genetic risk factors for both conditions.

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Figures

FIG 1.
FIG 1.
Association between asthma and obesity in the University of Washington Twin Registry. The prevalence of asthma was assessed according to 7 categories of BMI. The association of asthma and obesity was assessed in each sex by using mixed-effects ordinal regression. The prevalence of asthma increased with greater BMI in women (P < .001) and marginally in men (P = .07).
FIG 2.
FIG 2.
Path model depicting the additive genetic effects that are common to asthma and obesity plus additive genetic (A), unique environmental (E), and common environmental (C) effects that are unique to each phenotype. The parameter estimates are path coefficients, indicating the relative importance of the latent variables A, E, and C to asthma and obesity.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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