The contribution of genetics and environment to obesity

Abstract

Background: Obesity is a global health problem mainly attributed to lifestyle changes such as diet, low physical activity or socioeconomics factors. However, several evidences consistently showed that genetics contributes significantly to the weight-gain susceptibility.

Sources of data: A systematic literature search of most relevant original, review and meta-analysis, restricted to English was conducted in PubMed, Web of Science and Google scholar up to May 2017 concerning the contribution of genetics and environmental factors to obesity.

Areas of agreement: Several evidences suggest that obesogenic environments contribute to the development of an obese phenotype. However, not every individual from the same population, despite sharing the same obesogenic environment, develop obesity.

Areas of controversy: After more than 10 years of investigation on the genetics of obesity, the variants found associated with obesity represent only 3% of the estimated BMI-heritability, which is around 47-80%. Moreover, genetic factors per se were unable to explain the rapid spread of obesity prevalence.

Growing points: The integration of multi-omics data enables scientists having a better picture and to elucidate unknown pathways contributing to obesity.

Areas timely for developing research: New studies based on case-control or gene candidate approach will be important to identify new variants associated with obesity susceptibility and consequently unveiling its genetic architecture. This will lead to an improvement of our understanding about underlying mechanisms involved in development and origin of the actual obesity epidemic. The integration of several omics will also provide insights about the interplay between genes and environments contributing to the obese phenotype.

Keywords: BMI; genetics; gene–environment interactions; heritability; obesity; omics.