Abstract
We use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health and from the Health and Retirement Study to explore how the effect of individuals' genetic predisposition to higher BMI -measured by BMI polygenic scores- changes over the life-cycle for several cohorts. We find that the effect of BMI polygenic scores on BMI increases significantly as teenagers transition into adulthood (using the Add Health cohort, born 1974-83). However, this is not the case for individuals aged 55+ who were born in earlier HRS cohorts (1931-53), whose life-cycle pattern of genetic influence on BMI is remarkably stable as they move into old-age.
Highlights
According to the World Health Organization, worldwide obesity has almost tripled since 1975, and about 39% and 13% of the world’s adult population in 2016 were overweight and obese, respectively
We find that the effect of BMIPGS and log (BMI) polygenic scores on BMI significantly increases as teenagers transition into adulthood
In this paper we find that the effect of BMI polygenic scores on log(BMI) increases significantly as teenagers transition into adulthood
Summary
According to the World Health Organization, worldwide obesity has almost tripled since 1975, and about 39% and 13% of the world’s adult population in 2016 were overweight and obese, respectively. The prevalence of overweight and obesity among children and adolescents has risen even more dramatically from 4% in 1975 to just over 18% in 2016. The equivalent figures only for obesity among children and adolescents are just under 1% in 1975 and about 7% in 2016 (for further details see https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesityand-overweight). These trends pose serious challenges to both individual and public health because raised BMI is a risk factor for noncommunicable conditions such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and coronary heart disease among others (see for instance [1] and the references therein), as well as some cancers [2] and mental illnesses [3, 4].
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