Table 2 Estimated heritability of obesity-related traits in the VRC (2000–2015)

Trait	n	h ²	P-value	c ²	P-value	Sig. covariates
Adult measures
BW (kg)	626	0.72 (0.07)	<0.0001	0.05 (0.04)	0.0838	Sex, maternal diet, sex*maternal diet, ID(PN1), birth year
WC (cm)	347	0.87 (0.09)	<0.0001	0.08 (0.05)	0.0471	Sex
BMI	606	0.65 (0.07)	<0.0001	0.06 (0.04)	0.0445	Sex, maternal diet, sexmaternal diet, sexID(adult)
CRL (cm)	606	0.65 (0.07)	<0.0001	0.00 (0.00)	—	Sex, Maternal Diet, ID(PN1,PN2), Birth Year
Chronic obesity	626	0.53 (0.51)	0.0351	0.01 (0.18)	0.4821	Age, birth year, birth location
Growth parameters
BW (kg)
Asymptote	800	0.61 (0.06)	<0.0001	0.05 (0.03)	0.0296	Sex, maternal diet, sexmaternal diet, ID(PN1,PN2), sexID(PN1,PN2), birth year
Midpoint		0.12 (0.05)	0.0003	0.00 (0.00)	—	Sex, sexmaternal diet, ID(Adult), sexID(PN2,adult)
Rate		0.23 (0.06)	<0.0001	0.05 (0.04)	0.0629	Sex, maternal diet, sexmaternal diet, ID(PN1,adult), sexID(adult)
CRL (cm)
Asymptote	800	0.66 (0.06)	<0.0001	0.02 (0.06)	0.2412	Sex, maternal diet, sexmaternal diet, ID(PN2), sexID(PN1,PN2), birth year
Midpoint		0.13 (0.05)	0.0015	0.01 (0.03)	0.4377	Sex, sex*ID(PN2)
Rate		0.12 (0.07)	0.0131	0.07 (0.04)	0.0352	Sex, sex*maternal diet, ID(PN1,PN2)

Abbreviations: BMI, body-mass index; BW, body weight; CRL, crown-to-rump length; WC, waist circumference. Emboldened text indicates statistical significance. Estimated variance components for narrow-sense heritability (h2) and maternal component of the environmental variance (c2) are presented with standard error in parentheses. Significant covariates are presented in this table only. All analyses (except WC, see Methods section) included sex, maternal diet during gestation, ID diet begun within the first 2 postnatal years (PN1), begun during the next 3 postnatal years (PN2), and during adulthood (adult), year of birth, and location of birth (UCLA or Wake Forest) as covariates. Adult measures were adjusted for mean age at time of measurements prior to analysis. Interaction effects are denoted by an asterisk (*) between interacting effects. Adult trait values other than Chronic Obesity are mean values for all adult measures for a given individual. Only adult individuals (ages 5 and above) were used for adult measures analysis. Growth parameters were derived from NLME models that included individuals aged from birth to adulthood that had at least 6 measuring points represented, excluding time points when females were pregnant. All values were inverse normalized prior to heritability assessments.

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