Assortative mating by body height and BMI: Finnish Twins and their spouses

Silventoinen, Karri; Kaprio, Jaakko; Lahelma, Eero; Viken, Richard J.; Rose, Richard J.

doi:10.1002/ajhb.10183

Cited by 180 publications

(148 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…A previous Finnish study, using information on twins and their spouses, found that about half of the spousal correlation in BMI could be attributed to phenotypic assortment and half to social homogamy. 58 However, it is not very probable that phenotypic assortment would have greatly inflated the estimates of common environmental variation in the previous twin studies. If this would be the case, common environmental Genetics of childhood obesity K Silventoinen et al effect should be seen in adult BMI as well, which is, however, rarely the case.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The genetic and environmental influences on childhood obesity: a systematic review of twin and adoption studies

et al. 2009

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In this systematic review, we aimed to collect together all previous twin and adoption studies on childhood and adolescent obesity up to the age of 18 years. Using several sources, we identified nine twin and five adoption studies; all of these studies had used relative weight as an indicator of obesity. Except the two twin studies from the Korean population, all studies represented Caucasian populations. In a meta-analysis of these twin studies, we found that genetic factors had a strong effect on the variation of body mass index (BMI) at all ages. The common environmental factors showed a substantial effect in mid-childhood, but this effect disappeared at adolescence. Adoption studies supported the role of family environment in childhood obesity as correlations were found between adoptees and adoptive parents; however, correlations were substantially stronger between parents and their biological offspring, further supporting the importance of genetic factors. In the future, more studies implementing genetic and environmental measures into twin models are needed as they allow estimation of the proportion of total genetic variation explained by candidate genes and analyses of gene-environment interactions. More studies of genetic architecture in non-Caucasian populations, of gene-environment interactions, and of body composition and body fat distribution are needed. IntroductionChildhood obesity is one of the major public health problems in the modern world. In the period [2003][2004][2005][2006], 32% of the US children were classified as obese or overweight, 1 and increasing trends in childhood obesity are seen all over the world. 2 These results are especially alarming as overweight children show a high risk of becoming obese adults. 3,4 Childhood is an important period of life for health interventions as health-related behaviors are just in formation, and it seems possible to intervene for preventing the development of obesity. 5 Thus, it is crucial to further understand the background mechanisms of childhood obesity to find even more effective measures to prevent it before it begins to produce more or less irreversible health damages.Both genetic and environmental factors will probably contribute to childhood obesity. 6 Family studies have shown that obesity runs in families, although more detailed twin, adoption and family studies have shown that genetic differences between individuals explain a major proportion of the within-population variation in body mass index (BMI, kg m À2 ) in adulthood. [7][8][9] It is probable that genetic factors have an important role in childhood obesity also, but their role may be different or they may result from other genes than those that operate in adulthood. 10 The environmental factors shared by family members, such as co-twins in twin studies, have shown only a slight effect on the variation of adult BMI. 7,8 However, they may have a more important role in childhood, where parents and their offspring live together and where siblings obviously have a much greater opportu...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The genetic and environmental influences on childhood obesity: a systematic review of twin and adoption studies

et al. 2009

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“…Obese women with an overweight or obese male partner have up to twofold further loss in fertility as compared to their obese counterparts with normal weight partners [8]. A dual loss of fertility is more likely, however, because overweight and obese women tend to marry or cohabit with men of similar weight [9,10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Overweight Men: clinical pregnancy after ART is decreased in IVF but not in ICSI cycles

Keltz

Zapantis

Jindal

et al. 2010

J Assist Reprod Genet

100

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Purpose To evaluate if elevated male body mass influences success after assisted reproductive technologies Methods Retrospective study of 290 cycles. Results Male body mass index greater than 25.0 kg/m 2 was associated with significantly lower clinical pregnancy (53.2% vs. 33.6%). Multivariable logistic regression indicated that the likelihood of clinical pregnancy was decreased if the male partner was overweight after in vitro fertilization but not after intracytoplasmic sperm injection (odds ratios: 0.21 [0.07-0.69] vs. 0.75 [0.38-1.49], respectively) after adjustment for number of embryos transferred, sperm concentration, female age and body mass. Conclusion In this cohort, overweight status of the male partner was independently associated with decreased likelihood of clinical pregnancy after in vitro fertilization but not after intracytoplasmic sperm injection. A detrimental impact of higher male body mass was observed after adjusting for sperm concentration, suggesting that intracytoplasmic sperm injection may overcome some obesity related impairment of sperm-egg interaction.

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“…In the real world situations of mate advertising (in lonely hearts ads) and actual mate choice, height also appears to matter (Pawlowski & Koziel 2002). Similarly, weight is a factor in both stated preferences and observed choices (Silventoinen et al 2003;Kurzban & Weeden 2005). Despite these relationships having been demonstrated almost entirely in post-industrial societies, they have been used to bolster stories about the evolution of sexual dimorphism (Nettle 2002) and to explain intrasexual competition (Buunk et al 2008) and female character perception (Chu & Geary 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How universal are human mate choices? Size does not matter when Hadza foragers are choosing a mate

Sear

Marlowe

2009

Biol. Lett.

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It has been argued that size matters on the human mate market: both stated preferences and mate choices have been found to be non-random with respect to height and weight. But how universal are these patterns? Most of the literature on human mating patterns is based on post-industrial societies. Much less is known about mating behaviour in more traditional societies. Here we investigate mate choice by analysing whether there is any evidence for non-random mating with respect to size and strength in a forager community, the Hadza of Tanzania. We test whether couples assort for height, weight, body mass index (BMI), per cent fat and grip strength. We test whether there is a male-taller norm. Finally, we test for an association between anthropometric variables and number of marriages. Our results show no evidence for assortative mating for height, weight, BMI or per cent fat; no evidence for a male-taller norm and no evidence that number of marriages is associated with our size variables. Hadza couples may assort positively for grip strength, but grip strength does not affect the number of marriages. Overall we conclude that, in contrast to post-industrial societies, mating appears to be random with respect to size in the Hadza.

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Assortative mating by body height and BMI: Finnish Twins and their spouses

Cited by 180 publications

References 22 publications

The genetic and environmental influences on childhood obesity: a systematic review of twin and adoption studies

The genetic and environmental influences on childhood obesity: a systematic review of twin and adoption studies

Overweight Men: clinical pregnancy after ART is decreased in IVF but not in ICSI cycles

How universal are human mate choices? Size does not matter when Hadza foragers are choosing a mate

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