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A meta-analytic investigation of linkage and association of common leptin receptor (LEPR) polymorphisms with body mass index and waist circumference

International Journal of Obesity volume 26, pages 640–646 (2002)Cite this article

Abstract

Methods: We analyzed data pooled from nine studies on the human leptin receptor (LEPR) gene for the association of three alleles (K109R, Q223R and K656N) of LEPR with body mass index (BMI; kg/m2) and waist circumference (WC). A total of 3263 related and unrelated subjects from diverse ethnic backgrounds including African-American, Caucasian, Danish, Finnish, French Canadian and Nigerian were studied. We tested effects of individual alleles, joint effects of alleles at multiple loci, epistatic effects among alleles at different loci, effect modification by age, sex, diabetes and ethnicity, and pleiotropic genotype effects on BMI and WC.

Results: We found that none of the effects were significant at the 0.05 level. Heterogeneity tests showed that the variations of the non-significant effects are within the range of sampling variation.

Conclusions: We conclude that, although certain genotypic effects could be population-specific, there was no statistically compelling evidence that any of the three LEPR alleles is associated with BMI or WC in the overall population.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported in part by the NIH grants R01DK51716, R01DK52431, R01ES09912, F33DK09919, P30DK26687, DK25295 and P41RR03655. We thank Drs Jose Fernandez and Gary Gadbury for their valuable input.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. New York Obesity Research Center, St Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY, USA

    M Heo & E Gropp

  2. Division of Molecular Genetics, Department of Pediatrics, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY, USA

    RL Leibel & WK Chung

  3. Department of Rheumatology, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

    KR Fontaine

  4. Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, USA

    BB Boyer

  5. Department of Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacology, University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    M Koulu, MK Karvonen & U Pesonen

  6. Eating Disorder Unit, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    A Rissanen

  7. Department of Medicine, University of Kuopio, Kuopio, Finland

    M Laakso & MIJ Uusitupa

  8. Kinesiologie, Physical Activity Sciences Lab, Laval University, Ste-Foy, Quebec, Canada

    Y Chagnon

  9. Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

    C Bouchard

  10. Department of Pediatrics, Division of Endocrinology, University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, IA, USA

    PA Donohoue & TL Burns

  11. Department of Preventive Medicine, University of Iowa College of Public Health, Iowa City, IA, USA

    TL Burns

  12. Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes & Nutrition, University of Maryland at Baltimore, Baltimore, MD, USA

    AR Shuldiner & K Silver

  13. Department of Geriatrics, Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    RE Andersen

  14. Steno Diabetes Center, Hagedorn Research Institute, Gentofte, Denmark

    BB Boyer, O Pedersen & S Echwald

  15. Danish Epidemiology Science Center, Institute of Preventive Medicine, Copenhagen Health Services, Copenhagen, Denmark

    TIA Sørensen

  16. Internal Medicine Associates, Bloomington, IN, USA

    P Behn

  17. Department of Internal Medicine, Metabolism Division, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, MO, USA

    MA Permutt

  18. Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA

    KB Jacobs & RC Elston

  19. Department of Nutritional Science, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

    DJ Hoffman

  20. Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA

    DB Allison

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  1. M Heo
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Correspondence to DB Allison.

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Heo, M., Leibel, R., Fontaine, K. et al. A meta-analytic investigation of linkage and association of common leptin receptor (LEPR) polymorphisms with body mass index and waist circumference. Int J Obes 26, 640–646 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ijo.0801990

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ijo.0801990

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