[Nubella News] - Using the most sophisticated high-tech gadgetry, scientists say they've unearthed something quirky in people's genes that may make them prone to obesity.

Researchers at Boston's Harvard School of Public Health, Boston University's medical school and other institutions said they've found a common gene variation that increases a person's risk for obesity by 22 percent - and that one in 10 people may have it.

In April's Science journal, they heralded their findings as possibly an opening to development of new treatments for obesity, and they suspect scientists would unearth more gene variations linked to excess weight.

"Understanding the genetics underlying obesity is an important piece in the puzzle of how to manage the obesity epidemic," researchers said in a news release.

To read a recent Nubella article on the link between genes and obesity, click here.

Dieting, exercise still critically important

About 70 percent of Americans are overweight, but 30 percent slip into the obese range. However, researchers in Science emphasized that genetics aren't the only thing that make people overweight or obese, but poor nutrition and lack of exercise are just as guilty.

"It's not 100% determinative that if you have the gene you get obese," said Dr. Alan Herbert, a genetics expert at Boston University who led the study. "People often ask me what I would do if I had the mutation. If I could control my weight by diet and exercise then I wouldn't worry."

Regardless of how people got overweight or obese, their conditions significantly increase their risks for high blood pressure, diabetes, strokes, heart attacks and other ailments, the researchers warned.

Herbert and his team analyzed DNA and body mass indexes of more than 10,000 people from medical studies throughout the world. From Western Europe and Poland to far-flung places like Maywood, Ill., they found the same variant near a gene involved in the way the body burns fat. People who had two copies of the gene variation were 22-percent more likely to be obese, but the risk shot up to 136 percent in African-Caribbean people, according to the results.

Herbert said more work is needed to find out how many genes in a person's body are affected by the variation and to nail down the exact affect of it on excess weight.

Commonly known as BMI, "body mass index" is the ratio of height to weight, a major indicator of obesity. A BMI of 30 or more is considered obese and a BMI of 25 or more is the overweight range.

'Stop being holier than thou'

For years, scientists have studied genetics role in obesity, but were stymied by a lack of technology. In recent years, invention of gene-mapping tools allowed them to delve deeper into the murky world of genetics - and Herbert's team did just that. With high-tech tools, scientists have implicated at least 70 different genetic mutations, or variants of 10 different genes, in the obesity epidemic, but how common the mutations were in people or groups of people has never been clear until the Science study.

Meanwhile, Judith Stern, professor of nutrition and internal medicine at the University of California-Davis, and vice president of the American Obesity Association, introduced a different slant to the genetic findings for the San Jose Mercury News.

"If somebody is obese, we say, 'If you just eat less and exercise more, you won't be overweight,'" she said. "We actually think it's a moral failing. Here in this study, they say, 'Hey, it's a genetic variation.'

"We should stop being holier than thou."

Source: Nubella News
Posted by: Steve Smith
Reference: Science
Website: www.nubella.com

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