A common variant of HMGA2 is associated with adult and childhood height in the general population

MN Weedon, G Lettre, RM Freathy, CM Lindgren, BF Voight, JR Perry, KS Elliott, R Hackett, C Guiducci, B Shields, E Zeggini, H Lango, V Lyssenko, N J Timpson, NP Burtt, NW Rayner, R Saxena, K Ardlie, Jonathan H Tobias, A NessSM Ring, CN Palmer, AD Morris, L Peltonen, V Salomaa, Initiative The Diabetes Genetics, Consortium The Wellcome Trust Case Control, George Davey Smith, LC Groop, AT Hattersley, MI McCarthy, JN Hirschhorn, TM Frayling

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

360 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Human height is a classic, highly heritable quantitative trait. To begin to identify genetic variants influencing height, we examined genome-wide association data from 4,921 individuals. Common variants in the HMGA2 oncogene, exemplified by rs1042725, were associated with height (P = 4 x 10(-8)). HMGA2 is also a strong biological candidate for height, as rare, severe mutations in this gene alter body size in mice and humans, so we tested rs1042725 in additional samples. We confirmed the association in 19,064 adults from four further studies (P = 3 x 10(-11), overall P = 4 x 10(-16), including the genome-wide association data). We also observed the association in children (P = 1 x 10(-6), N = 6,827) and a tall/short case-control study (P = 4 x 10(-6), N = 3,207). We estimate that rs1042725 explains approximately 0.3% of population variation in height (approximately 0.4 cm increased adult height per C allele). There are few examples of common genetic variants reproducibly associated with human quantitativetraits; these results represent, to our knowledge, the first consistently replicated association with adult and childhood height.
Translated title of the contributionA common variant of HMGA2 is associated with adult and childhood height in the general population
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1245 - 1250
Number of pages6
JournalNature Genetics
Volume39
Issue number10
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2007

Bibliographical note

Publisher: Nature Publishing Group

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