Posts Tagged ‘genetics’

Cambridge Professor Sadaf Farooqi calls it a tour de force of genetics. Researchers from Regeneron and nine international research centers sequenced genetic exomes in 645,626 persons. With this painstaking research, they’ve found genetic sequences that protect some people from obesity. These sequences hard wire a person for leanness. In a world that prizes a lean […]

New research in PLOS Genetics provides deeper insight than ever into the role that skinny genes may play in protecting an individual from obesity. Senior investigator Sadaf Farooqi sums it up: This research shows for the first time that healthy thin people are generally thin because they have a lower burden of genes that increase a […]

New research published last week in Cell offers a glimpse of how a critical part of the brain gets wired for obesity very early in life. Sebastien Bouret, a senior author, explains: We know that the brain, in particular an area called the hypothalamus, has a very important role in the regulation of food intake […]

GWAS is an acronym that’s hard to avoid if you read much about obesity research. It’s shorthand for genome-wide association studies. And for the last several months, some of the brightest people in obesity research have been debating the merits of hammering away at GWAS that focuses on BMI. Does GWAS research miss the mark […]

New research from the University of Sydney is offering another clue for developing the science of personalized nutrition. Starch is the most common carbohydrate in our diets. And we have an enzyme in our saliva – amylase – that helps us start digesting starch even before we eat it. But different people will have very different responses […]

Our society seems to have accepted that gaining weight is an inevitable consequence of growing up in a place with easy access to calories and where physical activity plays a declining role in our professional and private lives. Aging just makes weight loss even more difficult. In the short term, the consequences of excess weight […]

The eternal debate grinds on. What determines our destiny more? Nature or nurture? And where does that leave the important matter of free will? When the subject is obesity, this debate is especially contentious. The most common – but incorrect – understanding of obesity holds that it is a failure of willpower. Nature and nurture take a […]

Two years ago, Rhythm Pharmaceuticals made a big splash with a study showing impressive efficacy for their super targeted obesity drug, setmelanotide. That paper in the New England Journal of Medicine showed setmelanotide could reverse obesity in patients with a rare POMC gene defect. Now, researchers have published new data showing promise in patients with […]

Attraction is in the eye of the beholder. And it turns out that BMI doesn’t do much to explain sexual attraction. Until now, some people have thought that a person with a high BMI might be more attractive to someone with a high BMI themselves. But a new study in Obesity this week squashes that […]

With much fanfare, 23andMe recently announced a massive study of the interaction between a person’s genetic profile and weight management. The company has recruited 100,000 customers with excess weight. The study will randomize those people to three different treatment strategies. One of the treatment groups will follow a low-carb diet. Another will cut animal fat and […]