Background: Age of menarche, or the timing of first menses in girls, is a physiological trait that shows substantial genetic heritability. Earlier age of menarche is associated with increased childhood adiposity and with adult risk of obesity and cardiovascular disease.
Objectives: We sought to further characterize the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs7759938 from the menarche locus LIN28B in 827 young Filipino women from the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey (CLHNS).
Methods: We tested rs7759938 for additive association with age of menarche and also tested whether childhood adiposity, as measured by body mass index (BMI) at age 8, mediated this relationship.
Results: We observed nominal association of rs7759938 with age of menarche (β = -0.118 years, 95% confidence interval = (-0.216, -0.020), P = 0.019) with an effect direction consistent with the previous report. We also observed suggestive evidence that the effect of the SNP on age of menarche was independent of childhood BMI.
Conclusions: These data confirm the strongest gene reported in Europeans (LIN28B) as a contributor to age of menarche in an Asian population.
Keywords: Age of menarche; SNP association.; childhood adiposity; mediation analysis.
© 2013 The Authors. Pediatric Obesity © 2013 International Association for the Study of Obesity.