Obesity during childhood can lead to increased risk of adverse cardiometabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and coronary artery disease during adult life. Evidence for strong genetic correlations Show more
Obesity during childhood can lead to increased risk of adverse cardiometabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and coronary artery disease during adult life. Evidence for strong genetic correlations between child and adult body mass index (BMI) suggest the possibility of shared genetic effects. We performed a test for pleiotropy (shared genetics) and functional enrichment of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with childhood BMI and 15 adult cardiometabolic traits using a unified statistical approach that integrates pleiotropy and functional annotation data. Pleiotropic genetic effects were significantly abundant in 13 out of 15 childhood BMI-adult cardiometabolic trait tests (P < 3.3 × 10 This study found significant pleiotropic genetic effects and enrichment of functional annotations in genetic variants that were jointly associated with childhood obesity and adult cardiometabolic diseases. The findings provide new avenues to disentangle the genetic basis of life course associations between childhood obesity and adult cardiometabolic diseases. Show less