Abstract

Objective: The underlying genetic component of obesity-related traits is not well understood, and there is limited evidence to support genetic association shared across multiple studies, populations, and environmental contexts. The present study investigated the association between candidate variants and obesity-related traits in a sample of 1,886 adult Filipino women from the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey (CLHNS) cohort.

Research Design and Methods: We selected and genotyped 19 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 10 genes (ADRB2, ADRB3, FTO, GNB3, INSIG2, LEPR, PPARG, TNF, UCP2, UCP3), that had been reported previously to be associated with an obesity-related quantitative trait.

Results: We observed evidence for association of the A-allele of rs9939609 (FTO intron 1) with increased body mass index (BMI) (p=.0072, before multiple test correction), baseline BMI (p=.0015), longitudinal BMI based on eight surveys from 1983 to 2005 (p=.000029), waist circumference (p=.0094), and weight (p=.021). The increase in average BMI was approximately .4 for each additional A-allele. We also observed association of the ADRB3 Trp64Arg variant with BMI, waist circumference, percent body fat, weight, fat mass, arm fat area, and arm muscle area (all p<.05), although the direction of effect is inconsistent with the majority of previous reports.

Conclusions: Our study confirms that FTO is a common obesity susceptibility gene in Filipinos with an effect size similar to that seen in samples of European origin.