TY - JOUR
T1 - Ethnicity, body mass, and genome-wide data
AU - Boardman, Jason D.
AU - Blalock, Casey L.
AU - Corley, Robin P.
AU - Stallings, Michael C.
AU - Domingue, Benjamin W.
AU - McQueen, Matthew B.
AU - Crowley, Thomas J.
AU - Hewitt, John K.
AU - Lu, Ying
AU - Field, Samuel H.
N1 - Funding Information:
The goal of health-disparities research is to identify the mechanisms that are responsible for persistent differences in health status among members of different social groups (Banks, Marmot, Oldfield, and Smith 2006; Hayward, Crimmins, Miles, and Yang 2000). Within this body of work, there is a great deal of interest in racial/ethnic differences in obesity and overweight. According to estimates from the 2007 to 2008 NHANES, among U.S., adults of 32.8% of non-Hispanic whites, 44.1% of non-Hispanic blacks, and 39.3% of Mexican-Americans are either overweight or obese (Flegal, Carroll, Ogden, and Curtin 2010). Differences along racial and ethnic lines are also apparent among children and adolescents, with 15.3% of non-Hispanic whites, 20% of non-Hispanic blacks, and This research was funded in part by grants from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver NICHD (K01HD50336) and NIDA (DA 11015 & DA012845). Address correspondence to Jason D. Boardman, Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado, 483 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0483, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
PY - 2010
Y1 - 2010
N2 - This article combines social and genetic epidemiology to examine the influence of self-reported ethnicity on body mass index (BMI) among a sample of adolescents and young adults. We use genetic information from more than 5,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms in combination with principal components analysis to characterize population ancestry of individuals in this study. We show that non-Hispanic white and Mexican-American respondents differ significantly with respect to BMI and differ on the first principal component from the genetic data. This first component is positively associated with BMI and accounts for roughly 3% of the genetic variance in our sample. However, after controlling for this genetic measure, the observed ethnic differences in BMI remain large and statistically significant. This study demonstrates a parsimonious method to adjust for genetic differences among individual respondents that may contribute to observed differences in outcomes. In this case, adjusting for genetic background has no bearing on the influence of self-identified ethnicity.
AB - This article combines social and genetic epidemiology to examine the influence of self-reported ethnicity on body mass index (BMI) among a sample of adolescents and young adults. We use genetic information from more than 5,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms in combination with principal components analysis to characterize population ancestry of individuals in this study. We show that non-Hispanic white and Mexican-American respondents differ significantly with respect to BMI and differ on the first principal component from the genetic data. This first component is positively associated with BMI and accounts for roughly 3% of the genetic variance in our sample. However, after controlling for this genetic measure, the observed ethnic differences in BMI remain large and statistically significant. This study demonstrates a parsimonious method to adjust for genetic differences among individual respondents that may contribute to observed differences in outcomes. In this case, adjusting for genetic background has no bearing on the influence of self-identified ethnicity.
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U2 - 10.1080/19485565.2010.524589
DO - 10.1080/19485565.2010.524589
M3 - Article
C2 - 21387985
AN - SCOPUS:78650102355
SN - 1948-5565
VL - 56
SP - 123
EP - 136
JO - Biodemography and Social Biology
JF - Biodemography and Social Biology
IS - 2
ER -