Genome-wide genetic homogeneity between sexes and populations for human height and body mass index

Abstract

Sex-specific genetic effects have been proposed to be an important source of variation for human complex traits. Here we use two distinct genome-wide methods to estimate the autosomal genetic correlation (rg) between men and women for human height and body mass index (BMI), using individual-level (n = ~44 000) and summary-level (n = ~133 000) data fromgenome-wide association studies. Results are consistent and show that the between-sex genetic correlation is not significantly different from unity for both traits. In contrast, we find evidence of genetic heterogeneity between sexes for waist-hip ratio (rg = ~0.7) and between populations for BMI (rg = ~0.9 between Europe and the USA) but not for height. The lack of evidence for substantial genetic heterogeneity for body size is consistent with empirical findings across traits and species.