Genome wide association study of obesity

Obesity is a great risk factor for type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer, which become a major burden for public health worldwide. As a classic complex disease, obesity is regarded as the interaction of genetic and environmental factors. However, it is controversial which of these two factors have greater effect on obesity. Several genetic loci have recently been reported to contribute to the development of obesity reported in genome-wide association study (GWAS) these years. GWAS play an important role in complex disease research and explore the potential effect of genetic variance. To further understand the genetic influence on obesity risk, we reviewed and collected articles on Pubmed for genes that reported in recent GWAS. We summarized the publications in GWAS and found 49 candidate genes, which were strongly suggested to relate to obesity risk in human. Despite the findings of this and other similar, contemporary research projects, much of the single nucleotide polymorphism details and underlying mechanism in this field of study remains, to a great extent, unknown. As a result, future studies are needed for obesity risk in human beings.