How to fight genetic effect of obesity

In a recent study, researchers have found that people around the world can use a physically active lifestyle to reduce the effect of inherited obesity genes.

Researcher David Meyre and his team from the McMaster University have shown that a physically active lifestyle can substantially decrease the genetic effect of the major obesity gene FTO on body weight in a multiethnic population.

Meyre said this provides a message of hope for the people with obesity predisposing genes that they can do something about it.

His team looked at data from up to 17,400 people from six ethnic groups, who were recruited from 17 countries and followed for more than three years.

First author Hudson Reddon said that to strengthen the confidence in their results, they used both basic and precise measures of physical activity and compared the traditional body mass index to the recently developed body adiposity index.

They analysed the impact of 14 obesity predisposing genes and found that physical activity can blunt the genetic effect of FTO, the major contributor to common obesity, by up to 75 percent.

The study is published in the journal Scientific Reports.