ArticleInternational journal of epidemiology2020
Exploring the role of genetic confounding in the association between maternal and offspring body mass index: evidence from three birth cohorts.
Article in International journal of epidemiology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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16 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 27 citations in OpenAlex.
- Maternal Overnutrition in Pregnancy Predicts Greater Body Mass Index Gains in Offspring by Early Midlife: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity · 2026Pooled it
- Body mass index in parents and their adult offspring: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity · 2024Pooled it
- Trial
- Causal effects of life-course obesity on sleep apnoea: a Mendelian randomization study.Internal and emergency medicine · 2026Article
- Parental body mass index and offspring childhood body size and eating behaviour: A structural equation modelling analysis in the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study.PLoS medicine · 2026Article
- Controlling for polygenic genetic confounding in epidemiologic association studies.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- A mediation analysis framework based on variance component to remove genetic confounding effect.Journal of human genetics · 2024Article
- Predicting higher child BMI z-score and obesity incidence in Malaysia: a longitudinal analysis of a dynamic cohort study.BMC public health · 2024Article
- Controlling for polygenic genetic confounding in epidemiologic association studies.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Maternal Pre-Pregnancy BMI, Offspring Adiposity in Late Childhood, and Age of Weaning: A Causal Mediation Analysis.Nutrients · 2023Article
- Fetal programming of human energy homeostasis brain networks: Issues and considerations.Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity · 2022Review
- Exploring the causal effect of maternal pregnancy adiposity on offspring adiposity: Mendelian randomisation using polygenic risk scores.BMC medicine · 2022Article
- Pregestational BMI and higher offspring's risk of overweight/obesity in smoker and non-smoker mothers.Public health nutrition · 2021Article
- Influence of maternal pre-pregnancy nutritional status on offspring anthropometric measurements and body composition in three Brazilian Birth Cohorts.Public health nutrition · 2021Article
- Educational note: addressing special cases of bias that frequently occur in perinatal epidemiology.International journal of epidemiology · 2021Article
- Maternal and infant prediction of the child BMI trajectories; studies across two generations of Northern Finland birth cohorts.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2021Article
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17 authors at 11 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundMaternal pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI) is positively associated with offspring birth weight (BW) and BMI in childhood and adulthood. Each of these associations could be due to causal intrauterine effects, or confounding (genetic or environmental), or some combination of these. Here we estimate the extent to which the association between maternal BMI and offspring body size is explained by offspring genotype, as a first step towards establishing the importance of genetic confounding.
methodsWe examined the associations of maternal pre-pregnancy BMI with offspring BW and BMI at 1, 5, 10 and 15 years, in three European birth cohorts (n ≤11 498). Bivariate Genomic-relatedness-based Restricted Maximum Likelihood implemented in the GCTA software (GCTA-GREML) was used to estimate the extent to which phenotypic covariance was explained by offspring genotype as captured by common imputed single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). We merged individual participant data from all cohorts, enabling calculation of pooled estimates.
resultsPhenotypic covariance (equivalent here to Pearson's correlation coefficient) between maternal BMI and offspring phenotype was 0.15 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.13, 0.17] for offspring BW, increasing to 0.29 (95% CI: 0.26, 0.31) for offspring 15 year BMI. Covariance explained by offspring genotype was negligible for BW [-0.04 (95% CI: -0.09, 0.01)], but increased to 0.12 (95% CI: 0.04, 0.21) at 15 years, which is equivalent to 43% (95% CI: 15%, 72%) of the phenotypic covariance. Sensitivity analyses using weight, BMI and ponderal index as the offspring phenotype at all ages showed similar results.
conclusionsOffspring genotype explains a substantial fraction of the covariance between maternal BMI and offspring adolescent BMI. This is consistent with a potentially important role for genetic confounding as a driver of the maternal BMI-offspring BMI association.
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