Sugar-sweetened Beverage Consumption May Modify Associations between Genetic Variants in the CHREBP Locus and HDL-C and TG Concentrations
Background - Carbohydrate responsive element binding protein (ChREBP) is a transcription factor that responds to sugar consumption. Sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption and genetic variants in the CHREBP locus have separately been linked to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and triglyceride (TG) concentrations. We hypothesized SSB consumption would modify the association between genetic variants in the CHREBP locus and dyslipidemia. Methods - Data from 11 cohorts from the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) consortium (N=63,599) and the UK Biobank (UKB) (N=59,220) were used to quantify associations of SSB consumption, genetic variants, and their interaction on HDL-C and TG concentrations using linear regression models. A total of 1,606 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within or near CHREBP were considered. SSB consumption was estimated from validated questionnaires and participants were grouped by their estimated intake. Results - In a meta-analysis, rs71556729 was significantly associated with higher HDL-C concentrations only among the highest SSB consumers [β (95% CI) = 2.12 (1.16, 3.07) mg/dl; p <0.0002], but not significantly among the lowest SSB consumers ( p =0.81; p Diff <0.0001). Similar results were observed for two additional variants (rs35709627 and rs71556736). For TG, rs55673514 was positively associated with TG concentrations only among the highest SSB consumers [β (95% CI): 0.06 (0.02, 0.09) per allele count for log(mg/dl), p =0.001], but not the lowest SSB consumers ( p =0.84; p Diff =0.0005). Conclusions - Our results identified genetic variants in the CHREBP locus that may protect against SSB-associated reductions in HDL-C and other variants that may exacerbate SSB-associated increases in TG concentrations.