Genome-wide association meta-analysis of eating behavior traits revealed one susceptibility locus for emotional eating.
In order to identify new and genome-wide significant loci for eating behavior traits (cognitive restraint, uncontrolled eating and emotional eating), we conducted a meta-GWAS with seven studies of European ancestry (n = 11,250). Eating behavior was assessed using the Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire. Genotype effects of single studies were estimated using additive models adjusting for age, sex, BMI, and principal components and single study results were combined by fixed-effect meta-analysis.For cognitive restraint and uncontrolled eating, no genome-wide significant association could be detected. For emotional eating, one genomic region on chromosome 5 comprising two polymorphisms attained genome-wide significance (P = 4.0×10-8 for rs6877636 and P = 3.2×10-8 for rs6897090). The minor alleles were associated with higher emotional eating scores (β=0.093 ± 0.017), with a similar direction of effect in each study. Both SNPs, in near perfect linkage disequilibrium, mapped to RP11-24P24.1, a processed pseudogene of ornithine decarboxylase 1 (ODC1). Enrichment analysis revealed a significant overlap between genome-wide BMI-associated variants and nominal emotional eating variants, supporting the hypothesis that shared genetic factors may influence both eating behavior traits and obesity risk. Finally, we observed a number of interesting associations reaching suggestive significance (P < 10-6) involving BMI candidate genes, including a suggestive association between FTO variants and cognitive restraint (rs9922708, β = 0.069, P = 5.9×10-7).In conclusion, our meta-GWAS identified for the first time a robust chromosomal region associated with emotional eating in seven studies. Given that emotional eating strongly influences body weight but is often stigmatized, recognizing genetic susceptibility to certain eating behaviors may help reduce stigma and alleviate guilt.