ArticlePLoS medicine2017
Childhood adiposity and risk of type 1 diabetes: A Mendelian randomization study.
Article in PLoS medicine, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 71 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
71 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 123 citations in OpenAlex.
- UK best practice recommendations for children and young people <18 years with pre-stage 3 type 1 diabetes, on behalf of the British Society for Paediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes (BSPED).Diabetic medicine : a journal of the British Diabetic Association · 2025Guideline
- High BMI and the risk for incident type 1 Diabetes Mellitus: a systematic review and meta-analysis of aggregated cohort studies.Cardiovascular diabetology · 2023Pooled it
- Childhood body size directly increases type 1 diabetes risk based on a lifecourse Mendelian randomization approach.Nature communications · 2022Pooled it
- Causal role of high body mass index in multiple chronic diseases: a systematic review and meta-analysis of Mendelian randomization studies.BMC medicine · 2021Pooled it
- "International journal of qualitative studies on health and well-being · 2026Article
- BMI Normalization Is Associated With Lower Risk of Progression to Type 1 Diabetes, Primarily in Youth.Diabetes care · 2026Article
- Impact of Body Size on Preclinical Type 1 Diabetes Development and Progression.Diabetes care · 2026Review
- The Bidirectional Relationship Between Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus and Obesity in Pediatric Patients: A Systematic Review.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Associations of body weight and COVID-19 with autoimmunity in pediatric new-onset type 1 diabetes: results from the prospective DPV registry.BMJ open diabetes research & care · 2026Article
- Causal Risk Factors for Type 1 Diabetes in Mendelian Randomization Studies: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Diabetes, metabolic syndrome and obesity : targets and therapy · 2026Review
- Neonatal and Birth Risk Factors for Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus: Prediction Using an Artificial Neural Network.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Stable heritability of type 1 diabetes in a Swedish Nationwide Cohort Study.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Unveiling taurine's protective role in ischemic stroke: insights from bidirectional Mendelian randomization and LC-MS/MS analysis.Genes & nutrition · 2025Article
- TYK2 :p.Pro1104Ala Variant Protects Against Autoimmunity by Modulating Immune Cell Levels.Immunology · 2025Article
- Global trends in type 1 diabetes in adolescents and young adults (1990-2019).Pediatric research · 2025Article
- Phenome-Wide Investigation of the Causal Associations Between Pre-Pregnancy Obesity Traits and Gestational Diabetes: A Two-Sample Mendelian Randomization Analyses.Reproductive sciences (Thousand Oaks, Calif.) · 2025Article
- Advances in Mendelian Randomization Studies of Obesity Over the Past Decade: Uncovering Key Genetic Mechanisms.Diabetes, metabolic syndrome and obesity : targets and therapy · 2025Review
- Assessing the Causal Effect of Pulse Pressure on Migraine Risk: A Mendelian Randomization Study.Journal of pain research · 2025Article
- Association Between Circulating Vitamin K Levels, Gut Microbiome, and Type 1 Diabetes: A Mendelian Randomization Study.Nutrients · 2024Article
- Improving on polygenic scores across complex traits using select and shrink with summary statistics (S4) and LDpred2.BMC genomics · 2024Article
11 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThe incidence of type 1 diabetes (T1D) is increasing globally. One hypothesis is that increasing childhood obesity rates may explain part of this increase, but, as T1D is rare, intervention studies are challenging to perform. The aim of this study was to assess this hypothesis with a Mendelian randomization approach that uses genetic variants as instrumental variables to test for causal associations. METHODS AND
findingsWe created a genetic instrument of 23 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with childhood adiposity in children aged 2-10 years. Summary-level association results for these 23 SNPs with childhood-onset (<17 years) T1D were extracted from a meta-analysis of genome-wide association study with 5,913 T1D cases and 8,828 reference samples. Using inverse-variance weighted Mendelian randomization analysis, we found support for an effect of childhood adiposity on T1D risk (odds ratio 1.32, 95% CI 1.06-1.64 per standard deviation score in body mass index [SDS-BMI]). A sensitivity analysis provided evidence of horizontal pleiotropy bias (p = 0.04) diluting the estimates towards the null. We therefore applied Egger regression and multivariable Mendelian randomization methods to control for this type of bias and found evidence in support of a role of childhood adiposity in T1D (odds ratio in Egger regression, 2.76, 95% CI 1.40-5.44). Limitations of our study include that underlying genes and their mechanisms for most of the genetic variants included in the score are not known. Mendelian randomization requires large sample sizes, and power was limited to provide precise estimates. This research has been conducted using data from the Early Growth Genetics (EGG) Consortium, the Genetic Investigation of Anthropometric Traits (GIANT) Consortium, the Tobacco and Genetics (TAG) Consortium, and the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium (SSGAC), as well as meta-analysis results from a T1D genome-wide association study.
conclusionsThis study provides genetic support for a link between childhood adiposity and T1D risk. Together with evidence from observational studies, our findings further emphasize the importance of measures to reduce the global epidemic of childhood obesity and encourage mechanistic studies.
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