Height may impact risk for common medical conditions

A person’s height appeared to impact their risk for a variety of common diseases, according to findings published in PLOS Genetics.

For example, researchers found that taller stature was associated with a greater risk for atrial fibrillation, varicose veins, peripheral neuropathy and skin and bone infections. It was also associated with a lower risk for coronary heart disease, high BP and high cholesterol.

Sridharan Raghavan, MD, an internist at the VA Eastern Colorado Health Care System, and colleagues said the findings suggest that “height may be an unrecognized but biologically plausible risk factor for several common conditions.”

“Using genetic methods applied to the VA Million Veteran Program, we found evidence that adult height may impact over 100 clinical traits, including several conditions associated with poor outcomes and quality of life,” the researchers wrote.

Raghavan and colleagues analyzed data from 222,300 non-Hispanic white adults and 58,151 non-Hispanic Black adults. Most participants (91.9%) were men. The researchers estimated genetic risk scores for height based on 3,290 height-associated variants from recent European-ancestry genome-wide meta-analyses. They compared associations of measured and genetically predicted height with phenome-wide traits extracted from VA electronic health records.

The researchers examined height as a “continuous variable,” Raghavan told Healio.

“In other words, our associations were quantified per standard deviation of height in our population (7.5 cm for non-Hispanic white individuals and 8.3 cm for non-Hispanic Black individuals),” he said. “That could also easily be converted to associations per centimeter or per inch, but we used the standard deviation in the study.”

Raghavan and colleagues reported that 345 clinical traits were associated with measured height in white adults and 17 clinical traits were associated with height in Black adults. Of these, 127 were associated with genetically predicted height at phenome-wide significance in white adults. Only two traits — acquired foot deformities and dermatophytosis of nail — were associated with genetically predicted height and measured height at phenome-wide significance in Black adults.

Obesity was inversely associated with genetically predicted height (OR = 0.94 per standard deviation increase in height), according to the researchers. In addition, they reported that genetically predicted height was associated with higher odds for atrial fibrillation or flutter in individuals without coronary heart disease (OR = 1.51 per standard deviation increase in height; 95% CI, 1.43-1.59) compared with those with coronary heart disease (OR = 1.39 per standard deviation increase in height; 95% CI, 1.32-1.46).

Asthma and non-specific peripheral nerve disorders were associated with genetically predicted height in women but not in men. Moreover, Raghavan and colleagues identified an association between neuropathy and genetically predicted height, as indicated by two genitourinary conditions. They also found an association between height and a phecode for non-specific skin disorders that may be linked to skin infections.

“I think it’s a little premature to translate our findings to clinical practice,” Raghavan said.

"Physicians are obviously at the point of care, and I would be interested over time to learn more from their experiences as to whether anecdotally they have noticed relationships of certain conditions with height, like chronic venous insufficiency, varicose veins, peripheral neuropathy and atrial fibrillation.”