Predicting Weight Loss of Obese Adolescents in Lifestyle Interventions by Genetic Screening: A Promising Approach for Researchers and Clinicians?

Department of Pediatric Endocrinology, Diabetes and Nutrition Medicine, Vestische Hospital for Children and Adolescents Datteln, University of Witten/Herdecke, Datteln, Germany

published online 11 June 2012.

Article Outline

BMI, Body mass index, SNP, Single nucleotide polymorphism

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Obesity in childhood is regarded as a multicausal disease with a complex interrelationship between genes, environment, and behavior.¹ Understanding the genetic mechanisms behind obesity and its associated comorbidities will probably allow the development of tailored specific interventions for prevention and treatment of childhood obesity in the future. Accordingly, many efforts have been made to identify genes associated with obesity, but the outcome is still relatively modest. There are a few monogenic forms of obesity such as melanocortin 4 receptor gene (MC4R) or proopiomelanocortin gene (POMC) mutations, leptin receptor insufficiency, or leptin deficiency.² They are characterized by a major effect of the respective mutation on the development of obesity. Detecting these mutations has helped us to understand the satiety regulation in humans, especially the central melanocortinergic pathway in the control of energy homeostasis. However, these monogenetic forms are rare and cannot explain the burden of childhood obesity. Therefore, genome-wide association studies including hundreds of thousands of probands have been performed to indentify new obesity susceptibility loci for body mass. So far, >30 human single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been identified to be associated with obesity.², ³