Childhood obesity: Genetic variation could be a factor

More complicated

Increasing childhood obesity has worried governments and public health advisers in many countries. But a study of 300 children with severe obesity by the University of Cambridge and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, suggest the problem may be more complicated than simply bad diet, overeating, or lack of exercise.

'It's a tricky issue,' says Doctor Matt Hurles from the Sanger Institute, 'because you don't want to remove peoples' motivation for their own health benefits. Equally, you don't want people to be stigmatized for things that are beyond their control.'  Dr Hurles' group have been studying how the DNA structure, or the genome structure, varies between individuals, and the impact that has on health and disease. His team collaborated with a group specifically working on severe childhood obesity and they were keen to discover whether genetic variation could be a factor in obesity.

Role in different diseases

'We have been exploring its role in different diseases,' says Dr Hurles, 'common diseases such as diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. We have also been looking at some rarer diseases, the childhood onset developmental diseases whether they, or some subset of them, are caused by these gains and losses of genomic material.'

Go online now for the full article on 'Obesity's Missing Gene' in the March edition of cubed:

www.britishcouncil.org/science-cubed.htm