SynthesisNature2012
FTO genotype is associated with phenotypic variability of body mass index.
Synthesis in Nature, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 262 papers, 11 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
262 citing papers in PubMed, 11 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 450 citations in OpenAlex.
- Genetics of monozygotic twins reveals the impact of environmental sensitivity on psychiatric and neurodevelopmental phenotypes.Nature human behaviour · 2025Pooled it
- Variance-quantitative trait loci enable systematic discovery of gene-environment interactions for cardiometabolic serum biomarkers.Nature communications · 2022Pooled it
- Population-specific and trans-ancestry genome-wide analyses identify distinct and shared genetic risk loci for coronary artery disease.Nature genetics · 2020Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Japanese GWAS identifies variants for bust-size, dysmenorrhea, and menstrual fever that are eQTLs for relevant protein-coding or long non-coding RNAs.Scientific reports · 2018Pooled it
- Large meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies identifies five loci for lean body mass.Nature communications · 2017Pooled it
- Ranking and characterization of established BMI and lipid associated loci as candidates for gene-environment interactions.PLoS genetics · 2017Pooled it
- Genome-wide physical activity interactions in adiposity - A meta-analysis of 200,452 adults.PLoS genetics · 2017Pooled it
- Pooled it
- FTO genotype and weight loss in diet and lifestyle interventions: a systematic review and meta-analysis.The American journal of clinical nutrition · 2016Pooled it
- A genome-wide association study of body mass index across early life and childhood.International journal of epidemiology · 2015Pooled it
- Influence of FTO rs9939609 and Mediterranean diet on body composition and weight loss: a randomized clinical trial.Journal of translational medicine · 2018Trial
- Gene-Environment Interaction Loci Associated with Refractive Error: SCAMPI Analysis.Ophthalmology science · 2026Article
- Optimizing phenotype scale improves genetic analyses in large-scale biobanks.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Enhancing polygenic risk prediction by modeling quantile-specific genetic effects.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Genetic Impacts on Variability of Body Fat Distribution Uncover Gene-Environment and Gene-Gene Interactions.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Polygenic modeling of genetic effects on both phenotypic mean and variance: distributional regression for BMI, blood and urine biomarkers in the UK Biobank.Frontiers in bioinformatics · 2026Article
- Multitrait analyses identify genetic variants associated with aortic valve function and aortic stenosis risk.Nature genetics · 2026Article
- Interactions with polygenic background impact quantitative traits in the UK Biobank.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
202 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
172 authors at 20 institutions in 14 countries.
Funding
Abstract
There is evidence across several species for genetic control of phenotypic variation of complex traits, such that the variance among phenotypes is genotype dependent. Understanding genetic control of variability is important in evolutionary biology, agricultural selection programmes and human medicine, yet for complex traits, no individual genetic variants associated with variance, as opposed to the mean, have been identified. Here we perform a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies of phenotypic variation using ∼170,000 samples on height and body mass index (BMI) in human populations. We report evidence that the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs7202116 at the FTO gene locus, which is known to be associated with obesity (as measured by mean BMI for each rs7202116 genotype), is also associated with phenotypic variability. We show that the results are not due to scale effects or other artefacts, and find no other experiment-wise significant evidence for effects on variability, either at loci other than FTO for BMI or at any locus for height. The difference in variance for BMI among individuals with opposite homozygous genotypes at the FTO locus is approximately 7%, corresponding to a difference of ∼0.5 kilograms in the standard deviation of weight. Our results indicate that genetic variants can be discovered that are associated with variability, and that between-person variability in obesity can partly be explained by the genotype at the FTO locus. The results are consistent with reported FTO by environment interactions for BMI, possibly mediated by DNA methylation. Our BMI results for other SNPs and our height results for all SNPs suggest that most genetic variants, including those that influence mean height or mean BMI, are not associated with phenotypic variance, or that their effects on variability are too small to detect even with samples sizes greater than 100,000.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.