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A common biological basis of obesity and nicotine addiction

  • T. E. Thorgeirsson*
  • , D. F. Gudbjartsson
  • , P. Sulem
  • , S. Besenbacher
  • , U. Styrkarsdottir
  • , G. Thorleifsson
  • , G. B. Walters
  • , H. Furberg
  • , P. F. Sullivan
  • , J. Marchini
  • , M. I. McCarthy
  • , V. Steinthorsdottir
  • , U. Thorsteinsdottir
  • , K. Stefansson
  • , Ida Surakka
  • , Jacqueline M. Vink
  • , Najaf Amin
  • , Frank Geller
  • , Thorunn Rafnar
  • , Toñu Esko
  • Stefan Walter, Christian Gieger, Rajesh Rawal, Massimo Mangino, Inga Prokopenko, Reedik Mägi, Kaisu Keskitalo, Iris H. Gudjonsdottir, Solveig Gretarsdottir, Hreinn Stefansson, Yurii S. Aulchenko, Mari Nelis, Katja K. Aben, Martin Den Heijer, Nicole Soranzo, Ana M. Valdes, Claire Steves, André G. Uitterlinden, Albert Hofman, Anke Tönjes, Peter Kovacs, Jouke Jan Hottenga, Gonneke Willemsen, Nicole Vogelzangs, Angela Döring, Norbert Dahmen, Barbara Nitz, Samuli Ripatti, Markus Perola, Johannes Kettunen, Anna Liisa Hartikainen, Anneli Pouta, Jaana Laitinen, Matti Isohanni, Shen Huei-Yi, Maxine Allen, Maria Krestyaninova, Alistair S. Hall, John R. Thompson, Hogni Oskarsson, Thorarinn Tyrfingsson, Lambertus A. Kiemeney, Marjo Riitta Järvelin, Veikko Salomaa, Michael Stumvoll, Tim D. Spector, H. Erich Wichmann, Andres Metspalu, Nilesh J. Samani, Brenda W. Penninx, Ben A. Oostra, Dorret I. Boomsma, Henning Tiemeier, Cornelia M. Van Duijn, Jaakko Kaprio, Jeffrey R. Gulcher, Yun Jung Kim, Jennifer Dackor, Eric Boerwinkle, Nora Franceschini, Diego Ardissino, Luisa Bernardinelli, Pier M. Mannucci, Francesco Mauri, Piera A. Merlini, Devin Absher, Themistocles L. Assimes, Stephen P. Fortmann, Carlos Iribarren, Joshua W. Knowles, Thomas Quertermous, Luigi Ferrucci, Toshiko Tanaka, Joshua C. Bis, Curt D. Furberg, Talin Haritunians, Barbara McKnight, Bruce M. Psaty, Kent D. Taylor, Evan L. Thacker, Peter Almgren, Leif Groop, Claes Ladenvall, Michael Boehnke, Anne U. Jackson, Karen L. Mohlke, Heather M. Stringham, Jaakko Tuomilehto, Emelia J. Benjamin, Shih Jen Hwang, Daniel Levy, Sarah Rosner Preis, Ramachandran S. Vasan, Jubao Duan, Pablo V. Gejman, Douglas F. Levinson, Alan R. Sanders, Jianxin Shi, Esther H. Lips, James D. McKay, Antonio Agudo, Luigi Barzan, Vladimir Bencko, Simone Benhamou, Xavier Castellsagué, Cristina Canova, David I. Conway, Eleonora Fabianova, Lenka Foretova, Vladimir Janout, Claire M. Healy, Ivana Holcátová, Kristina Kjaerheim, Pagona Lagiou, Jolanta Lissowska, Ray Lowry, Tatiana V. Macfarlane, Dana Mates, Lorenzo Richiardi, Peter Rudnai, Neonilia Szeszenia-Dabrowska, David Zaridze, Ariana Znaor, Mark Lathrop, Paul Brennan, Stefania Bandinelli, Timothy M. Frayling, Jack M. Guralnik, Yuri Milaneschi, John R.B. Perry, David Altshuler, Roberto Elosua, Sek Kathiresan, Gavin Lucas, Olle Melander, Christopher J. O'Donnell, Stephen M. Schwartz, Benjamin F. Voight, Johannes H. Smit, Eco J.C. De Geus, Stephen J. Chanock, Fangyi Gu, Susan E. Hankinson, David J. Hunter, Daniel I. Chasman, Brendan M. Everett, Guillaume Paré, Paul M. Ridker, Ming D. Li, Hermine H. Maes, Janet Audrain-McGovern, Danielle Posthuma, Laura M. Thornton, Caryn Lerman, Jed E. Rose, John P.A. Ioannidis, Peter Kraft, Dan Yu Lin, Jason S. Liu, Federica Tozzi, Dawn M. Waterworth, Sreekumar G. Pillai, Pierandrea Muglia, Lefkos Middleton, Wade Berrettini, Christopher W. Knouff, Xin Yuan, Gérard Waeber, Peter Vollenweider, Martin Preisig, Nicholas J. Wareham, Jing Hua Zhao, Ruth J.F. Loos, Inês Barroso, Kay Tee Khaw, Scott Grundy, Philip Barter, Robert Mahley, Antero Kesaniemi, Ruth McPherson, John Vincent, John Strauss, James Kennedy, Anne Farmer, Peter McGuffin, Richard Day, Keith Matthews, Per Bakke, Amund Gulsvik, Susanne Lucae, Marcus Ising, Tanja Brueckl, Sonja Horstmann, Joachim Heinrich, Claudia Lamina, Ozren Polasek, Lina Zgaga, Jennifer Huffman, Susan Campbell, Jaspal Kooner, John C. Chambers, Mary Susan Burnett, Joe Devaney, Augusto D. Pichard, Kenneth M. Kent, Lowell Satler, Joseph M. Lindsay, Ron Waksman, Stephen Epstein, Jim F. Wilson, Sarah H. Wild, Harry Campbell, Veronique Vitart, Muredach P. Reilly, Mingyao Li, Liming Qu, Robert Wilensky, William Matthai, Hakon H. Hakonarson, Daniel J. Rader, Andre Franke, Michael Wittig, Arne Schäfer, Manuela Uda, Antonio Terracciano, Xiangjun Xiao, Fabio Busonero, Paul Scheet, David Schlessinger, David St Clair, Dan Rujescu, Gonçalo R. Abecasis, Hans Jörgen Grabe, Alexander Teumer, Henry Völzke, Astrid Petersmann, Ulrich John, Igor Rudan, Caroline Hayward, Alan F. Wright, Ivana Kolcic, Benjamin J. Wright, Anthony J. Balmforth, Carl A. Anderson, Tariq Ahmed, Christopher G. Mathew, Miles Parkes, Jack Satsangi, Mark Caulfield, Patricia B. Munroe, Martin Farrall, Anna Dominiczak, Jane Worthington, Wendy Thomson, Steve Eyre, Anne Barton, Vincent Mooser, Clyde Francks
*Corresponding author for this work
  • deCODE Genetics
  • Aarhus University
  • Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
  • Departments of Genetics and Psychiatry
  • University of Oxford
  • University of Iceland
  • University of Helsinki
  • National Institute for Health and Welfare
  • Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
  • Erasmus University Rotterdam
  • Statens Serum Institut
  • University of Tartu
  • University of Tartu
  • Helmholtz Zentrum München - German Research Center for Environmental Health
  • St Thomas’ Hospital Campus
  • Radboud University Nijmegen
  • Netherlands Association of Comprehensive Cancer Centres
  • Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
  • Leipzig University
  • VU University Medical Center
  • Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
  • University of Oulu
  • Finnish Institute of Occupational Health
  • Wellcome Trust
  • University of Leeds
  • University of Leicester
  • Therapeia
  • Vogur SAA Addiction Treatment Center
  • Imperial College London
  • Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
  • University of Parma
  • University of Cambridge
  • University of Pavia
  • University of Milan
  • Asst Grande Ospedale Metropolitano Niguarda
  • HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology
  • Stanford University
  • Kaiser Permanente
  • National Institutes of Health
  • University of Washington
  • Wake Forest University
  • Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
  • Group Health Cooperative
  • Lund University
  • University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
  • South Ostrobothnia Central Hospital
  • Boston University
  • NorthShore University HealthSystem
  • International Agency for Research on Cancer
  • Institute Catala Oncologia
  • General Hospital
  • Charles University
  • Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale
  • Institut Gustave Roussy
  • University of Padua
  • University of Glasgow
  • Specialized Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology
  • Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute
  • Palacký University Olomouc
  • Trinity College Dublin
  • Cancer Registry of Norway Institute of Population-Based Cancer Research
  • National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
  • Maria Sklodowska-Curie Institute of Oncology
  • Newcastle University
  • University of Aberdeen
  • Institute of Public Health
  • University of Turin
  • Hungarian National Institute of Environmental Health
  • Nofer Institute of Occupational Medicine
  • Russian Academy of Medical Sciences - N.N. Blokhin Russian Cancer Research Center
  • Croatian National Cancer Registry
  • Centre National de Recherche en Génomique Humaine
  • Centre d'Etude du Polymorphisme Humain (CEPH)
  • Azienda Sanitaria Firenze
  • University of Exeter
  • Tuscany Regional Health Agency
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Massachusetts General Hospital
  • Harvard University
  • Municipal Institute for Medical Research Hospital del Mar
  • National Heart Lung and Blood Institute’s and Boston University’s Framingham Heart Study
  • Brigham and Women’s Hospital
  • University of Ottawa
  • University of Virginia
  • Virginia Commonwealth University
  • University of Pennsylvania
  • Duke University
  • University of Ioannina
  • Tufts University
  • Tufts Medical Center
  • Evotec, AG
  • GlaxoSmithKline
  • Hoffmann-La Roche Inc.
  • University of Toronto
  • University of Lausanne
  • University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
  • Heart Research Institute
  • University of California at San Francisco
  • American Hospital
  • King's College London
  • University of Dundee
  • University of Bergen
  • Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry
  • Innsbruck Medical University
  • University of Split
  • University of Edinburgh
  • Washington Hospital Center
  • Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
  • Kiel University
  • National Research Council of Italy
  • University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
  • Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg
  • University of Greifswald
  • Peninsula Medical School, Universities of Exeter and Plymouth
  • Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust
  • Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
  • Queen Mary University of London
  • University of Glasgow
  • University of Manchester
  • Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust
  • Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Smoking influences body weight such that smokers weigh less than non-smokers and smoking cessation often leads to weight increase. The relationship between body weight and smoking is partly explained by the effect of nicotine on appetite and metabolism. However, the brain reward system is involved in the control of the intake of both food and tobacco. We evaluated the effect of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) affecting body mass index (BMI) on smoking behavior, and tested the 32 SNPs identified in a meta-analysis for association with two smoking phenotypes, smoking initiation (SI) and the number of cigarettes smoked per day (CPD) in an Icelandic sample (N=34 216 smokers). Combined according to their effect on BMI, the SNPs correlate with both SI (r=0.019, P=0.00054) and CPD (r=0.032, P=8.0 × 10-7). These findings replicate in a second large data set (N=127 274, thereof 76 242 smokers) for both SI (P=1.2 × 10-5) and CPD (P=9.3 × 10-5). Notably, the variant most strongly associated with BMI (rs1558902-A in FTO) did not associate with smoking behavior. The association with smoking behavior is not due to the effect of the SNPs on BMI. Our results strongly point to a common biological basis of the regulation of our appetite for tobacco and food, and thus the vulnerability to nicotine addiction and obesity.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere308
Pages (from-to)1-7
Number of pages7
JournalTranslational Psychiatry
Volume3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2013
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Addiction
  • body mass index
  • nicotine dependence
  • obesity
  • smoking

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