Gerald S Berenson

Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center New Orleans | LSUHSC · Cardiovascular Center

Objective Although the tracking of BMI levels from childhood to adulthood has been examined, there is little information on the within‐person variability of BMI. Methods Longitudinal data from 11,591 schoolchildren, 3,096 of whom were reexamined as adults, were used to explore the tracking and variability of BMI levels. This article focuses on cha...

Background -Data suggest that the prediction of adult cardiovascular disease using a model comprised entirely of adult non-laboratory based risk factors is equivalent to an approach that additionally incorporates adult lipid measures. We assessed and compared the utility of a risk model based solely on non-laboratory risk factors in adolescence vs...

Background: Although the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) growth charts are widely used in studies of childhood obesity, BMI z scores are known to be inaccurate at values greater than the 97th percentile. Methods: We used longitudinal data from 6994 children in the Bogalusa Heart Study who were examined multiple times to compare tracking of 3 B...

Background There is paucity of knowledge concerning the specific age in youth when the associations of metabolic syndrome (MetS) begin to be operative. Thus, we investigated the relation of age to the associations of childhood MetS with adult MetS, type 2 diabetes mellitus and high carotid intima‐media thickness. Methods and Results Five thousand...

Fetal life and childhood are important in the development of cardiometabolic risk and later clinical disease of atherosclerosis, hypertension and diabetes mellitus. Molecular and environmental conditions leading to cardiometabolic risk in early life bring us a challenge to develop effective prevention and intervention strategies to reduce cardiovas...

Background and aims: Adiponectin, an adipose-secreted protein that has been linked to insulin sensitivity, plasma lipids, and inflammatory patterns, is an established biomarker for metabolic health. Despite clinical relevance and high heritability, the determinants of plasma adiponectin levels remain poorly understood. Methods and results: We co...

The electrocardiographic QRS duration, a measure of ventricular depolarization and conduction, is associated with cardiovascular mortality. While genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with QRS duration at 22 loci among those of European descent, the genetic architecture of QRS durat...

Background: More than 600 deaths of all causes have been documented over the 40-year duration of the Bogalusa Heart Study. Of these, 97 deaths have been related to cardiovascular events, based on obituaries published in local newspapers, death certificates obtained from the State Health Department, information from the coroner and word of mouth by...

Purpose Birth weight (BW) is associated with risk of cardiovascular (CV) disease. The findings from studies examined the association of BW with metabolic markers of CV risk were inconsistent and controversial. We examined the association of BW with insulin resistance and blood lipids using repeated measures up to mid-adulthood. Methods Data from s...

Purpose of Study: The study aims to delineate the temporal sequences between obesity and hyperinsulinemia in childhood and their impact on adult hypertension in a longitudinal cohort. Methods Used: The study cohort consisted of 990 adults (630 whites and 360 blacks). These subjects had BMI and fasting insulin measured twice 5.4 years apart in child...

Purpose of Study Low birth weight is associated with cardiovascular risk and risk factors. However, information is limited regarding its impact on heart rate (HR), an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease. This study assessed the hypothesis that birth weight is associated with resting HR during different growth periods. Methods Used The...

In this study, we conducted an epigenome-wide association study of metabolic syndrome (MetS) among 846 participants of European descent in the Genetics of Lipid Lowering Drugs and Diet Network (GOLDN). DNA was isolated from CD4+ T cells and methylation at ~470,000 cytosine-phosphate-guanine dinucleotide (CpG) pairs was assayed using the Illumina In...

Childhood, and adolescence are particularly vulnerable periods of life to the effects of cardiometabolic risk and later development of atherosclerosis, hypertension and diabetes mellitus. Developing countries with limited resources suffer most heavily from the consequences of cardiometabolic risk in children and its future implications to the globa...

Secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure increases cardiovascular disease risk. The objective of this study was to examine the association of SHS exposure in childhood and adulthood with adult arterial thickness. The study cohort consisted of 415 nonsmoking adults (301 whites and 114 blacks; ages 26.2-48.0 years) enrolled in 2004-2010. The arterial wall thi...

To examine the associations of five GWAS-identified genes with carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) in a biracial sample from the Bogalusa Heart Study, and evaluate their participation in gene-smoking interactions. Far wall IMTs of common carotid arteries were measured using high-resolution B-mode ultrasound. Both the gene-smoking interactions and...

The early onset of menarche is related to the adulthood risk of cardiovascular (CV) disease. This study examines the relation of early onset of menarche to carotid artery intima-media thickness (IMT), which is a surrogate marker of CV disease, among asymptomatic young adult women in a black-white community. A cohort of 461 women (31% black, 69% whi...

Leucocyte telomere length (LTL), which is fashioned by multiple genes, has been linked to a host of human diseases, including sporadic melanoma. A number of genes associated with LTL have already been identified through genome-wide association studies. The main aim of this study was to establish whether DCAF4 (DDB1 and CUL4-associated factor 4) is...

Objectives: The study assessed the hypothesis that smoking strengthens the association of adult arterial stiffness with long-term cumulative burden of blood pressure (BP) from childhood to adulthood. Backgrounds: Tobacco smoking and elevated BPs are important risk factors of vascular stiffness. However, the synergistic effect of these two risk f...

Background: Cardiovascular risk factors are associated with left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), but little is known regarding related impact of longitudinal measures of childhood adiposity and LV hemodynamic variables. Objectives: The aim of this study was to examine the impact of cumulative long-term burden and trends of excessive adiposity and...

Age and metabolic syndrome are major risk factors for atherosclerosis. However, limited information is available regarding whether cigarette smoking, another major, modifiable risk factor, has synergistic effects with age and metabolic syndrome on subclinical atherosclerosis, particularly in young adults. This aspect was examined in 1,051 adults (7...

Cardiovascular risk factors in childhood are predictive of adulthood arterial stiffness. However, it is unknown whether this relationship varies by race or sex. Six hundred and eighty adults aged 24 to 43 had been followed for an average of 26.3 years, from the Bogalusa Heart Study. Brachial to ankle pulse wave velocity (baPWV) measured by an autom...

The relative importance of the fourth (K4) and fifth (K5) Korotkoff phases as the indicator of diastolic blood pressure (DBP) levels among children remains uncertain. In a sample of 11,525 youth aged 5-17, we examined interexaminer differences in these 2 phases and the relation of theses 2 phases to adult blood pressure levels and hypertension. The...

Blood pressure (BP) is a heritable risk factor for cardiovascular disease. To investigate genetic associations with systolic BP (SBP), diastolic BP (DBP), mean arterial pressure (MAP), and pulse pressure (PP), we genotyped ∼50,000 SNPs in up to 87,736 individuals of European ancestry and combined these in a meta-analysis. We replicated findings in...

Background: Increased Augmentation Index (AI) has been associated with kidney damage in patients with hypertension and underlying cardio-metabolic diseases. However, information is scant on the association between AI and renal function/performance in non-institutionalized asymptomatic young adults. Hypothesis: Race-specific differences exist on the...

The length of female reproductive lifespan is associated with multiple adverse outcomes, including breast cancer, cardiovascular disease and infertility. The biological processes that govern the timing of the beginning and end of reproductive life are not well understood. Genetic variants are known to contribute to ∼50% of the variation in both age...

Waist circumference (WC) and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) are surrogate measures of central adiposity that are associated with adverse cardiovascular events, type 2 diabetes and cancer independent of body mass index (BMI). WC and WHR are highly heritable with multiple susceptibility loci identified to date. We assessed the association between SNPs and...

Background There are limited data available on the longitudinal relationship between candy consumption by children on weight and other cardiovascular risk factors (CVRF) in young adults. The present study investigated whether candy consumption in children was predictive of weight and CVRF in young adults. MethodsA longitudinal sample of children 10...

Background: Early onset of menarche is related to adulthood risk of breast cancer and cardiovascular (CV) disease. In our previous study we examined the longitudinal changes in adiposity and related risk variables of metabolic syndrome from childhood to young adulthood with respect to early onset of menarche. The purpose of this study is to extend...

Introduction: Research indicates a relationship between in utero growth retardation (IUGR) and the development of many disorders later in life. The Barker hypothesis of fetal origins of adult disease suggests that IUGR, measured by birth weight (BW), may play an important role in the future physiology of many organs and body systems. Objectives:...

Although estimation of percentage body fat with the Slaughter skinfold-thickness equations (PBFSlaughter) is widely used, the accuracy of this method has not been well studied. The objective was to determine the accuracy of the Slaughter skinfold-thickness equations. We compared agreement between PBFSlaughter and derived from dual-energy X-ray abso...

As a biologically-mediated pathway between adversity and declines in physical health, allostatic load has been frequently hypothesized as a potential contributor to racial disparities in birth outcomes, but an empirical evidence is lacking. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between maternal preconception allostatic load, ra...

Large disparities in adverse birth outcomes persist between African American and white women in the US despite decades of research, policy, and public health intervention. Allostatic load is an index of dysregulation across multiple physiologic systems that results from chronic exposure to stress in the physical and socio-cultural environment which...

High blood pressure (BP) is more prevalent and contributes to more severe manifestations of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in African Americans than in any other United States ethnic group. Several small African-ancestry (AA) BP genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have been published, but their findings have failed to replicate to date. We report...

Anorexia nervosa (AN) and related eating disorders are complex, multifactorial neuropsychiatric conditions with likely rare and common genetic and environmental determinants. To identify genetic variants associated with AN, we pursued a series of sequencing and genotyping studies focusing on the coding regions and upstream sequence of 152 candidate...

Leukocyte telomere length (LTL) shortens with age. Longitudinal studies have reported accelerated LTL attrition when baseline LTL is longer. However, the dependency of LTL attrition on baseline LTL might stem from a statistical artifact known as regression to the mean (RTM). To our knowledge no published study of LTL dynamics (LTL and its attrition...

Gender differences in the relationship between central and peripheral blood pressure (BP) are not well described. We sought to investigate gender differences between central systolic blood pressure (cSBP) and peripheral systolic blood pressure (pSBP) in adults in the Bogalusa study population. This study enrolled adults in a cross sectional survey...

Background: Elevated blood pressure (BP) levels in childhood have been associated with subsequent atherosclerosis. However, it is uncertain whether this risk is attenuated in individuals who acquire normal BP by adulthood. The present study examined the effect of child and adult BP levels on carotid artery intima-media thickness (IMT) in adulthood...

Table S1 Percentage of subjects experiencing change (Δ) in decile rank at follow-up examination in the four chorts jointly. Table S2 Percentage of subjects experiencing change (Δ) in decile rank at follow-up examination in each of the four cohorts. Table S3 Percentage of subjects experiencing change (Δ) in LTL rank at follow-up examination (each ra...

In clinical medicine, lipids are commonly measured biomarkers used to assess an individual’s risk for cardiovascular disease, heart attack, and stroke. Accurately predicting longitudinal lipid levels based on genomic information can inform therapeutic practices and decrease cardiovascular risk by identifying high-risk patients prior to onset. Using...

Genetic markers previously reported to be associated with lipid level phenotypes and previously reported parameter estimates.

Single marker association results.

Ankle-Brachial Index (ABI) has been widely used clinically to define peripheral artery disease (PAD). Previous studies have established the correlation between ABI and coronary artery disease among men and women; however, limited information is available on the association between ABI and subendocardial viability in terms or Subendocardial Viabilit...

Goals for cardiovascular (CV) disease prevention were set by the American Heart Association in 2010 for the concept of CV health. Ideal CV health is defined by 7 CV health metrics: blood pressure, glucose, cholesterol, body mass index, and physical activity on recommended levels; nonsmoking; and a healthy diet. We studied the prevalence of ideal CV...

SHORT LEUKOCYTE TELOMERE LENGTH (LTL) IS ASSOCIATED WITH ATHEROSCLEROSIS IN ADULTS AND: diminished survival in the elderly. LTL dynamics are defined by LTL at birth, which is highly variable, and its age dependent attrition thereafter, which is rapid during the first 20 years of life. We examined whether age-dependent LTL attrition during adulthood...

African American (AA) women have earlier menarche on average than women of European ancestry (EA), and earlier menarche is a risk factor for obesity and type 2 diabetes among other chronic diseases. Identification of common genetic variants associated with age at menarche has potential value in pointing to the genetic pathways underlying chronic di...

Blood pressure (BP) is a heritable determinant of risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD). To investigate genetic associations with systolic BP (SBP), diastolic BP (DBP), mean arterial pressure (MAP) and pulse pressure (PP), we genotyped ∼50 000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that capture variation in ∼2100 candidate genes for cardiovascular...

Recent genetic association studies have made progress in uncovering components of the genetic architecture of the body mass index (BMI). We used the ITMAT-Broad-Candidate Gene Association Resource (CARe) (IBC) array comprising up to 49 320 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across ∼2100 metabolic and cardiovascular-related loci to genotype up t...

Background: Genome-wide association studies have identified several genetic loci associated with variation in resting heart rate in European and Asian populations. No study has evaluated genetic variants associated with heart rate in African Americans. Objective: To identify novel genetic variants associated with resting heart rate in African Am...

Background: Ethnic differences in cardiac arrhythmia incidence have been reported, with a particularly high incidence of sudden cardiac death and low incidence of atrial fibrillation in individuals of African ancestry. We tested the hypotheses that African ancestry and common genetic variants are associated with prolonged duration of cardiac repol...

Atherogeneis is a chronic progressive syndrome caused by endothelial dysfunction, vascular inflammation, vessel wall remodeling and eventual vascular flow compromise. Emerging data suggest that arterial compliance inversely correlates with atherogenesis and cardiovascular (CV) events. However, information is scant on the association of chronic syst...

Background: The PR interval, as measured by the resting, standard 12-lead ECG, reflects the duration of atrial/atrioventricular nodal depolarization. Substantial evidence exists for a genetic contribution to PR, including genome-wide association studies that have identified common genetic variants at 9 loci influencing PR in populations of Europea...

To investigate possible age-related changes in associations between polymorphisms in the fat mass and obesity-associated (FTO) gene and higher body mass index (BMI). Multilevel mixed regression models were used to examine associations between four FTO variants and longitudinal BMI profiles in non-Hispanic white and African American children and ado...

Background: Low birth weight, an indictor of intrauterine growth restriction is associated with cardiovascular (CV) disease and type 2 diabetes. Measures of glucose homeostasis such as insulin, glucose, glycated haemoglobin (HbA(1c)) and homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) are also recognized as risk factors of CV disease a...

Background: Understanding the risk for type 2 diabetes (T2D) early in the life course is important for prevention. Whether genetic information improves prediction models for diabetes from adolescence into adulthood is unknown. Methods: With the use of data from 1030 participants in the Bogalusa Heart Study aged 12 to 18 followed into middle adul...

Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have identified many SNPs underlying variations in plasma-lipid levels. We explore whether additional loci associated with plasma-lipid phenotypes, such as high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), total cholesterol (TC), and triglycerides (TGs), can be identif...

Not all obese adults have cardiometabolic abnormalities. It is unknown whether this is true in children and, if true, whether children who have metabolically healthy overweight/obesity (MHO) will also have favorable cardiometabolic profiles in adulthood. These aspects were examined in 1,098 individuals who participated as both children (aged 5–17 y...

The association between birth weight and long-term within-individual variability of blood pressure (BP) was examined in a longitudinal cohort of 1,454 adults (939 whites and 515 blacks; adulthood age = 19–50 years) enrolled in the Bogalusa Heart Study in Bogalusa, Louisiana, in 1973–2010. BP variability was depicted as standard deviation, coefficie...

The aim of this study was to examine the effect of resolution from metabolic syndrome (MetS) between youth and adulthood on carotid artery intima-media thickness (IMT) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Published findings demonstrate that youth with MetS are at increased risk of cardio-metabolic outcomes in adulthood. It is not known whether this...

Leukocyte telomere length (LTL) is associated with a number of common age-related diseases and is a heritable trait. Previous genome wide association studies (GWAS) identified two loci on chromosomes 3q26.2 (TERC) and 10q24.33 (OBFC1) that are associated with the inter-individual LTL variation. We performed a meta-analysis of 9,190 individuals from...

Although the prevalence of obesity is increasing during adulthood, there have been few assessments of obesity, cardiovascular risk factors, and levels of physical activity among adult elementary school staff. Data were collected from 745 African-American and White female school personnel in a suburban school district in southeastern Louisiana as pa...

FTO affects changes in BMI during both childhood and adulthood. However, its effect on onset age of overweight in adulthood is not known. To address this question, we conducted a study to examine effects of FTO tag SNPs on censored age of overweight in the longitudinal Bogalusa Heart Study (BHS) cohort, which began in 1973-1974. Of participating su...

Background: Metabolic syndrome has been called a "small baby syndrome," but other analyses suggest that postnatal growth is more important than birthweight, or that large babies are also at risk. The aim of this analysis was to examine whether there was a relationship between both low and high birthweight and metabolic syndrome, using multiple def...

Diet and lifestyle factors of young adults and their relationship to health risk factors are understudied. Data from the Bogalusa Heart Study population (n = 1214; 19-39 years; 74.1% white; 60.8% female) were used to study associations of lifestyle, health risk factors, and reported health problems with the National Institutes of Health body mass i...

The prevalence of obesity among children and adolescents increased by almost threefold from the 1970s to 2000. We examined whether these secular changes in BMI were accompanied by increases in blood pressure levels. A total of 24,092 examinations were conducted among 11,478 children and adolescents (aged 5-17 years) from 1974 to 1993 in the Bogalus...