Rationale: Recently, we identified a genotype-by-smoking status interaction with serum leptin levels in a sample of Mexican Americans. However, it is unknown whether this phenomenon occurs in other populations as well.
Objective: The goal of this study was to examine the genetic architecture of the response to smoking in leptin levels using data from Midwestern Caucasian subjects participating in the Metabolic Risk Complications of Obesity Genes project.
Methods: We employed a variance decomposition analysis using maximum likelihood methods to model genotype-by-smoking interactions for leptin levels and examined the impact of the exclusion of smokers in a subsequent linkage analysis.
Results: We found significant evidence (p-value=0.027) for a genotype-by-smoking status interaction for serum leptin levels. In the subsequent linkage analysis with smokers excluded, we obtained a maximum LOD score of 3.4 (P=0.00004) near D8S1128.
Conclusions: These results suggest that a QTL on chromosome 8 may have a differential effect on the expression of leptin in smokers vs nonsmokers, as first identified in Mexican Americans.