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. 2011 Apr 28;6(4):e18939.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0018939.

A genome-wide association study on obesity and obesity-related traits

Kai Wang  1 , Wei-Dong Li, Clarence K Zhang, Zuoheng Wang, Joseph T Glessner, Struan F A Grant, Hongyu Zhao, Hakon Hakonarson, R Arlen Price
Affiliations

A genome-wide association study on obesity and obesity-related traits

Kai Wang et al. PLoS One. .

Erratum in

  • PLoS One. 2012;7(2). doi: 10.1371/annotation/a34ee94e-3e6a-48bd-a19e-398a4bb88580

Abstract

Large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified many loci associated with body mass index (BMI), but few studies focused on obesity as a binary trait. Here we report the results of a GWAS and candidate SNP genotyping study of obesity, including extremely obese cases and never overweight controls as well as families segregating extreme obesity and thinness. We first performed a GWAS on 520 cases (BMI>35 kg/m(2)) and 540 control subjects (BMI<25 kg/m(2)), on measures of obesity and obesity-related traits. We subsequently followed up obesity-associated signals by genotyping the top ∼500 SNPs from GWAS in the combined sample of cases, controls and family members totaling 2,256 individuals. For the binary trait of obesity, we found 16 genome-wide significant signals within the FTO gene (strongest signal at rs17817449, P = 2.5 × 10(-12)). We next examined obesity-related quantitative traits (such as total body weight, waist circumference and waist to hip ratio), and detected genome-wide significant signals between waist to hip ratio and NRXN3 (rs11624704, P = 2.67 × 10(-9)), previously associated with body weight and fat distribution. Our study demonstrated how a relatively small sample ascertained through extreme phenotypes can detect genuine associations in a GWAS.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Manhattan plot (logarithm of P-values versus chromosome coordinates) for SNP association on obesity.
The FTO locus on 16q12.2 reached genome-wide significance.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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