Journal
JOURNAL OF ALLERGY AND CLINICAL IMMUNOLOGY
Volume 116, Issue 6, Pages 1235-1241Publisher
MOSBY-ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.jaci.2005.09.016
Keywords
asthma; obesity; genetic; twin
Categories
Funding
- NHLBI NIH HHS [K23 HL072923, K23 HL004231, K23HL04231, K23 HL004231-04, K23HL72923] Funding Source: Medline
- NIAID NIH HHS [U19AI38429, U19 AI038429] Funding Source: Medline
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Background: Asthma and obesity are common conditions that are strongly associated. This association might be due to shared genetic or environmental causes. Objective: We sought to determine whether a shared genetic cause is responsible for the association between asthma and obesity and to estimate the magnitude of shared genetic cause. Methods: The analyses were performed with 1001 monozygotic and 383 dizygotic same-sex twin pairs within the University of Washington Twin Registry. The presence of asthma was determined by self-report of a physician diagnosis of asthma, and body mass index (BMI) was calculated by using self-reported height and weight. Obesity was defined as a BMI of 30 or greater. The association between asthma and BMI was assessed by means of mixed-effects ordinal regression. Twin correlations examined the association of asthma and obesity. Univariate and bivariate structural equation models estimated the components of variance attributable to genetic and environmental effects. Results: A strong association between asthma and BMI was identified in the sample population (P < .001). Substantial heritability was detected for asthma (53%) and obesity (77%), which is indicative of additive genetic influences on each disorder. The best-fitting model of shared components of variance indicated that 8% of the genetic component of obesity is shared with asthma. Conclusion: The covariation between obesity and asthma is predominantly caused by shared genetic risk factors for both conditions.
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