A genome-wide association study of thyroid stimulating hormone and free thyroxine in Danish children and adolescents

Hypothyroidism is associated with obesity, and thyroid hormones are involved in the regulation of body composition, including fat mass. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in adults have identified 19 and 6 loci associated with plasma concentrations of thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) and free thyroxine (fT4), respectively. This study aimed to identify and characterize genetic variants associated with circulating TSH and fT4 in Danish children and adolescents and to examine whether these variants associate with obesity. Genome-wide association analyses of imputed genotype data with fasting plasma concentrations of TSH and fT4 from a population-based sample of Danish children, adolescents, and young adults, and a group of children, adolescents, and young adults with overweight and obesity were performed (N = 1,764, mean age = 12.0 years [range 2.5-24.7]). Replication was performed in additional comparable samples (N = 2,097, mean age = 11.8 years [1.2-22.8]). Meta-analyses, using linear additive fixed-effect models, were performed on the results of the discovery and replication analyses. No novel loci associated with TSH or fT4 were identified. Four loci previously associated with TSH in adults were confirmed in this study population (PDE10A (rs2983511: β = 0.112SD, p = 4.8 ∙ 10-16), FOXE1 (rs7847663: β = 0.223SD, p = 1.5 ∙ 10-20), NR3C2 (rs9968300: β = 0.194SD), p = 2.4 ∙ 10-11), VEGFA (rs2396083: β = 0.088SD, p = 2.2 ∙ 10-10)). Effect sizes of variants known to associate with TSH or fT4 in adults showed a similar direction of effect in our cohort of children and adolescents, 11 of which were associated with TSH or fT4 in our study (p