Investigation of the gene variants predisposing to obesity: An association study

AIMS: Obesity is a major public helath issue in both but mostly in industrialized and developing countries with its increasing prevalance. Obesity is also a risk factor for many disorders such as Type 2 Diabetes, dyslipidemia, hypertension, and artherosclorosis. Obesity is considered to be inherited as a multifactorial inheritance mode in which both genetic factors and environmental factors plays a role in its development. Determining the gene variants that predisposes to obesity is very important to prevent other diseases it causes. In this tudy, it was aimed to investigate the association/s between MC4R, BDNF Val66Met, UCP2-866G/A and NPY2R Ile195T/C gene variants and obesity as well as obesity-related clinical phenotypes.MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 88 obese cases and 80 non-obese healthy controls were included in this study. Following the clinical evalution the subjects were subjected to body composition analyses. The genotypes for the MC4R, BDNF, UCP2 ve NPY2R variants were obtained using PCR-RFLP technique. Then These genotypic and allele frequencies as well as antopometric measurements were analyzed statisitically using SPSS program.RESULTS: To determine any association/s between the four gene variants (BDNF Val66met, NPY2R Ile195T/C, UCP2 -866G/A, MC4R -2745C/T) and anthropometric measurements, statistical analyses were carried out. As a result, no differences were found between the genotype and allele frequencies for these gene variants studied in obese cases versus nonobese controls as well as in terms of anthropometric measurements. However, some antropometric measurements were found higher/lower in certain groups having certain genotypes or alleles though they did not reach statistical significance.DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: No statistically significant differences were found between obese cases versus non-obese control subjects in terms of genotype and allele frequencies as well as obesity-related phenotypes of gene variants studied (BDNF Val66met, NPY2R Ile195T/C, UCP2 -866G/A, MC4R -2745C/T). So, this study does not support the predisposing roles of these gene variants in the development of obesity. However, to confirm that these gene variants contributes to obesity and obesity-related phenotypes, further studies with both higher population sizes and many candidate genes are needed to be investigated simultaneously.