Can a genetic test identify newborns at risk of becoming severely obese by middle age? Researchers say they have come up with one, and that it might allow interventions in childhood to avoid that fate.
The test examines more than 2 million spots in a person's genetic code, seeking variants that individually nudge a person's obesity risk up by a tiny amount. The researchers drew on previously published data about those variants to create a risk score.
Analysis showed the genetic propensity to obesity began having an effect on weight around age 3. Up to about age 8, "you might be able to make a difference in the kids who are born susceptible to obesity," said one author of the study, Dr. Sekar Kathiresan of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.The results for middle age came from a study of about 288,000 people.
Among study participants with the highest scores, he noted, 17 per cent were of normal weight. Other analyses show that people who remain lean despite an inherited propensity for obesity tend to eat better and have more physical activity than others with a high score who got fat.Ruth Loos, a professor of environmental medicine and public health who did not participate in the study, said the risk score explains more of people's genetic tendency than previous studies did.
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