Evaluation of the Predictive Ability, Environmental Regulation and Pharmacogenetics Utility of a BMI-Predisposing Genetic Risk Score during Childhood and Puberty Anguita-Ruiz, Augusto González Gil, Esther M. Pastor-Villaescusa, Belén Alcalá Fernández, Jesús Gil Hernández, Ángel Aguilera García, Concepción María Obesity Childhood obesity Metabolic syndrome Genetics Genetic risk score Pharmacogenetics Predictive ability Gene-environment interactions Puberty Childhood Spanish children The authors would like to thank the Spanish children and parents who participated in the study. Polygenetic risk scores (pGRSs) consisting of adult body mass index (BMI) genetic variants have been widely associated with obesity in children populations. The implication of such obesity pGRSs in the development of cardio-metabolic alterations during childhood as well as their utility for the clinical prediction of pubertal obesity outcomes has been barely investigated otherwise. In the present study, we evaluated the utility of an adult BMI predisposing pGRS for the prediction and pharmacological management of obesity in Spanish children, further investigating its implication in the appearance of cardio-metabolic alterations. For that purpose, we counted on genetics data from three well-characterized children populations (composed of 574, 96 and 124 individuals), following both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs, expanding childhood and puberty. As a result, we demonstrated that the pGRS is strongly associated with childhood BMI Z-Score (B = 1.56, SE = 0.27 and p-value = 1.90 × 10−8 ), and that could be used as a good predictor of obesity longitudinal trajectories during puberty. On the other hand, we showed that the pGRS is not associated with cardio-metabolic comorbidities in children and that certain environmental factors interact with the genetic predisposition to the disease. Finally, according to the results derived from a weight-reduction metformin intervention in children with obesity, we discarded the utility of the pGRS as a pharmacogenetics marker of metformin response. 2020-09-03T09:03:36Z 2020-09-03T09:03:36Z 2020-06-02 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Anguita-Ruiz, A., González-Gil, E. M., Rupérez, A. I., Llorente-Cantarero, F. J., Pastor-Villaescusa, B., Alcalá-Fdez, J., ... & Leis, R. (2020). Evaluation of the Predictive Ability, Environmental Regulation and Pharmacogenetics Utility of a BMI-Predisposing Genetic Risk Score during Childhood and Puberty. Journal of Clinical Medicine, 9(6), 1705. [doi: 10.3390/jcm9061705] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/63273 10.3390/jcm9061705 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución 3.0 España MDPI