Early Growth Genetics Consortium

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Longitudinal Body Mass Index (BMI) GWAS Summary Data (2024)

Here we developed a framework for conducting GWAS on longitudinal (repeated measures) phenotypes that have a non-linear trajectory over time. We modelled repeated measures of BMI from 2 weeks to 18 years in 5 cohorts from within the EGG consortium (ALSPAC, CHOP, NFBC1966, NFBC1986 and OBE) to test our framework. We derived 12 phenotypes including the slope and area under the curve in four distinct time periods (infancy, early childhood, late childhood and adolescence) and the age and BMI at the adiposity peak (around 9 months of age) and adiposity rebound (around 5-6 years of age). We performed genetic analyses on each of these derived phenotypes.

We identified 28 genome-wide significant SNPs at 13 loci and revealed that loci associated with change in BMI across early life differ from those that are related to mean levels of BMI.

We provide an R package, EGGLA, to conduct these analyses for childhood BMI consistently across different cohorts (https://m.canouil.dev/eggla/articles/eggla.html).

Dataset Details

We have 12 summary result files, each relating to a different phenotype. All results are from European GWAS meta-analyses with up to 19 308 participants in total. The 12 phenotypes were as follows.

  1. Slope in infancy (two weeks - six months): EGG_infancy_slope.txt.gz

  2. Slope in early childhood (1.5 - 3.5 years): EGG_early_childhood_slope.txt.gz

  3. Slope in late childhood (6.5 - 10 years): EGG_late_childhood_slope.txt.gz

  4. Slope in adolescence (12-17 years): EGG_adolescence_slope.txt.gz

  5. Area under the curve (AUC) in infancy (two weeks - six months): EGG_infancy_AUC.txt.gz

  6. Area under the curve (AUC) in early childhood (1.5 - 3.5 years): EGG_early_childhood_AUC.txt.gz

  7. Area under the curve (AUC) in late childhood (6.5 - 10 years): EGG_late_childhood_AUC.txt.gz

  8. Area under the curve (AUC) in adolescence (12-17 years): EGG_adolescence_AUC.txt.gz

  9. Age at the adiposity peak: EGG_AP_age.txt.gz

  10. BMI at the adiposity peak: EGG_AP_BMI.txt.gz

  11. Age at the adiposity rebound: EGG_AR_age.txt.gz

  12. BMI at the adiposity rebound: EGG_AR_BMI.txt.gz

    13. All files include the following information: rsid, chromosome ("chr"), position on build 37 ("pos"), effect allele ("ea"), non-effect allele ("nea"), effect allele frequency ("eaf"), effect size ("beta"), standard error ("se"), P-value ("p"), P-value for Cochran's heterogeneity statistic ("q_p_value") and number of participants in the meta-analysis ("n_samples").

    Please note that for AUC in adolescence and slope in adolescence only four cohorts had data across the complete age range and thus their meta-analyses were conducted with one cohort less than for the other phenotypes (i.e. without OBE).

    Acknowledging The Data

    When using data from the downloadable meta-analyses results, please acknowledge the source of the data as follows:

    Data on the longitudinal growth phenotypes have been contributed by the EGG Consortium and have been downloaded from www.egg-consortium.org.

    In addition to the above acknowledgement, please cite the paper below:

    A framework for conducting GWAS using repeated measures data with an application to childhood BMI.

    Burrows K, Heiskala A, Bradfield J.P. et al.

    Nature Communications (2024)

    Preprint https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.03.13.24304263