Hernández-Valero M A, Rother J, Gorlov I, Frazier M, Gorlova O
1 Department of Health Disparities Research, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA.
2 Department of Epidemiology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA.
J Dev Orig Health Dis. 2013 Dec;4(6):499-506. doi: 10.1017/S204017441300041X.
Imprinted genes often affect body size-related traits such as weight. However, the association of imprinting with obesity, especially childhood obesity, has not been well studied. Mexican-American children have a high prevalence, approaching 50%, of obesity and/or overweight. In a pilot study of 75 Mexican-American children, we analyzed the relationships among obese/overweight status, methylation status and single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) status at a CpG site in a differentially methylated region (DMR) of the imprinted H19/IGF2 locus. We observed a significant difference in SNP rs10732516 frequency between boys and girls among the overweight and obese children but not among the lean children. We also found that children with lower methylation of the polymorphic CpG site (CpG4) in the H19 DMR had higher birth weights than did children with higher methylation (P = 0.04). Our results suggest that CpG4 methylation status may be associated with childhood obesity in Mexican-American children in a sex-specific manner.
印记基因常常影响与体型相关的性状，如体重。然而，印记与肥胖尤其是儿童肥胖之间的关联尚未得到充分研究。墨西哥裔美国儿童肥胖和/或超重的患病率很高，接近50%。在一项针对75名墨西哥裔美国儿童的试点研究中，我们分析了肥胖/超重状态、印记H19/IGF2基因座差异甲基化区域（DMR）中一个CpG位点的甲基化状态与单核苷酸多态性（SNP）状态之间的关系。我们观察到，超重和肥胖儿童中男孩和女孩的SNP rs10732516频率存在显著差异，但瘦儿童中没有。我们还发现，H19 DMR中多态性CpG位点（CpG4）甲基化程度较低的儿童出生体重高于甲基化程度较高的儿童（P = 0.04）。我们的结果表明，CpG4甲基化状态可能以性别特异性方式与墨西哥裔美国儿童的儿童肥胖相关。
