As requested by @TamarHaspel here is a brief tweetorial on my latest @NatureRevGenet review on the #genetics 🧬 of #obesity rdcu.be/cyjVV 🧵👇 1/7
https://twitter.com/GilesYeo/status/1441085877539663891
While changes in the environment have driven its increased prevalence, obesity results from interaction between environmental & biological factors. Crucially, there is a strong genetic component underlying the large variation in body-weight in today’s ‘obesogenic’ environment 2/7
Classically, we’ve considered obesity in two broad categories; obesity resulting from mutations in single genes, typically rare, starting in childhood & severe; & ‘common’ obesity, a result of hundreds of genetic variants that each have a small effect 3/7
Although often considered to be two distinct forms, we now know that both rare severe forms & common forms of obesity have broadly similar underlying biology, involving brain pathways that control different aspects of food intake & appetitive behaviour 4/7
E.g. the leptin-melanocortin pathway, where rare disruptive mutations result in severe obesity, whereas multiple more subtle & nuanced variations influence whether we are small, medium or large in the current food environment. In fact there’s now a drug targeting this pathway 5/7
But that is just one pathway amongst many. New genetic approaches coupled with larger & better characterized human populations are revealing new circuits, taking us closer to the ‘holy grail’ —the ability to move away from a failed ‘one-size-fits-all’ strategy for obesity 6/7
People who are overweight or living with obesity are not bad or lazy or slothful or morally bereft. They are fighting their biology. Until society accepts that for some people, it will always be harder to say ‘NO’, we will never solve obesity & other diet-related illnesses 7/7
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