The Center for Applied Genomics at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia declare tha they have identified and characterized a genetic predisposition to common childhood obesity. The meta-analysis, by an international collaborative group, the Early Growth Genetics (EGG) Consortium, was published in Nature Genetics, and included 14 previous studies encompassing 5,530 cases of childhood obesity and 8,300 control subjects, all of European ancestry.
Previous studies had identified gene variants contributing to obesity in adults and in children with extreme obesity, but relatively little is known about genes implicated in regular childhood obesity. The study team identified two novel loci, one near the OLFM4 gene on chromosome 13, the other within the HOXB5 gene on chromosome 17. Both loci presented associactions with adult and extreme childhood obesity. However, none of the genes were previously implicated in obesity and although it is known they have functions in the intestine, their precise functional role in obesity is currently unknown.
Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22484627
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