Hormonal Disorders

Genetics of Obesity

The approaches used to identify genes linked to obesity depend on the form of obesity and genotyping technology available at the time. Early gene discovery studies for monogenic forms of obesity had a case-focused design: patients with severe obesity, together with their affected and unaffected family members, were examined for potential gene-disrupting causal mutations via Sanger sequencing. By contrast, genetic variation associated with common forms of obesity have been identified in large-scale population studies, either using a case–control design or continuous traits such as BMI.