Genome scan for body mass index and height in the Framingham Heart Study

Body mass index (BMI) and adult height are moderately and highly heritable traits, respectively. To investigate the genetic background of these quantitative phenotypes, we performed a linkage genome scan in the extended pedigrees of the Framingham Heart Study. Two variance-components approaches (SOLAR and MERLIN-VC) and one regression method (MERLIN-REGRESS) were applied to the data.

Evidence for linkage to BMI was found on chromosomes 16 and 6 with maximum LOD scores of 3.2 and 2.7, respectively. For height, all markers showing a LOD score greater than 1 in our analysis correspond to previously reported linkage regions, including chromosome 6q with a maximum LOD score of 2.45 and chromosomes 9, 12, 14, 18, and 22. Regarding the analysis, the three applied methods gave very similar results in this unselected sample with approximately normally distributed traits.

Our analysis resulted in the successful identification of linked regions. In particular, we consider the regions on chromosomes 6 and 16 for BMI and the regions on chromosomes 6, 9, and 12 for stature interesting for fine mapping and candidate gene studies.