Given the gradients in weight and severe obesity observed in adulthood, we next posed the question – at what age does this gradient first start to emerge? We explored this question in a birth cohort from the United Kingdom, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC); (Boyd et al., 2013; Fraser et al., 2013). The ALSPAC study recruited pregnant mothers in the United Kingdom between 1991 and 1992, and followed offspring with serial weight assessments from time of birth to age 18 years. We identified 7,861 participants with both weight and genotyping array data available for analysis.
