Hallym University Chuncheon, Kangwon-do, Republic of Korea
Objectives: The FFQ is a common dietary assessment tool used in large-scale epidemiologic studies of nutrition and health. A dietary assessment tool that serves as a questionnaire to estimate frequency of food intake and, in some cases, provides portion size information on food and beverage intake over a specific period (typically the last month, three months, or a year). There are two types of factors in nutrient intake from food intake. Internal factors include nutritional needs, metabolic control, and genetics. External environmental factors include region, social status, and wealth. In this study, we aimed to understand genetic basis for food intake.
Methods: We conducted genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 72,298 individuals from the Korea Genomics Study (KoGES) to identify genetic variants associated with food intake in the Korean population. Genotyping was carried out using Korea Biobank Array (KBA) chip. Genetic association between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across whole genome and FFQ information for several food intakes was tested by linear regression analysis using PLINK software.
Results: As a result of linear regression, 7 SNPs showing genome-wide significant association (P < 5 X 10-8) were identified for coffee intake, milk intake, and tofu intake. In addition, our GWA analysis detected 6 SNPs showing a suggestive association (P < 10-6) with green tea intake and yogurt intake.
Conclusions: In total, GWAS identified several genetic loci for 5 food groups among those preferred by Koreans. These results will be useful to dissect genetic correlation between food intake and diet-related metabolic diseases/traits, in which clinical correlation has been detected from several observational epidemiology studies. Furthermore, these results will be tested to gain insight into the causal relationship between food intake and diet-related metabolic diseases/traits by Mendelian randomization analysis in the future.
Funding Sources: This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (RS-2023-00245960).
