According to a study by the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers have discovered that obesity is in the genese. They identified the FTO gene as the major culprit for humans being overweight.
Researchers stated that you cannot gain weight if you do not overweight. This "Fast Food Gene" (FTO) is responsible for individuals to crave foods high in fat instead of healthy ones.
And ... according to Wikipedia, a study of 38,759 Europeans for variants of FTO identified an obesity risk allele. In particular, carriers of one copy of the allele weighed on average 1.2 kg more than people with no copies. Carriers of two copies (16% of the subjects) weighed 3 kg more and had a 1.67-fold higher rate of obesity than those with no copies. The association was observed in ages 7 and upwards. This gene is also associated with increased risk of Type 2 Diabetes.
The authors of this study claim that while obesity was already known to have a genetic component (from twin studies), no replicated previous study has ever identified a obesity risk allele that was so common in the human population. The risk allele is a cluster of 10 single nucleotide polymorphism in the first intron of FTO called rs9939609. According to HapMap, it has population frequencies of 45% in the West/Central Europeans, 52% in Yorubans (West African natives) and 14% in Chinese/Japanese.
Furthermore morbid obesity is associated with a combination of FTO and INSIG2 single nucleotide polymorphisms.
Researchers stated that you cannot gain weight if you do not overweight. This "Fast Food Gene" (FTO) is responsible for individuals to crave foods high in fat instead of healthy ones.
And ... according to Wikipedia, a study of 38,759 Europeans for variants of FTO identified an obesity risk allele. In particular, carriers of one copy of the allele weighed on average 1.2 kg more than people with no copies. Carriers of two copies (16% of the subjects) weighed 3 kg more and had a 1.67-fold higher rate of obesity than those with no copies. The association was observed in ages 7 and upwards. This gene is also associated with increased risk of Type 2 Diabetes.
The authors of this study claim that while obesity was already known to have a genetic component (from twin studies), no replicated previous study has ever identified a obesity risk allele that was so common in the human population. The risk allele is a cluster of 10 single nucleotide polymorphism in the first intron of FTO called rs9939609. According to HapMap, it has population frequencies of 45% in the West/Central Europeans, 52% in Yorubans (West African natives) and 14% in Chinese/Japanese.
Furthermore morbid obesity is associated with a combination of FTO and INSIG2 single nucleotide polymorphisms.
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