Advancement in genetic variants conferring obesity susceptibility from genome-wide association studies

Obesity prevalence has increased in recent years. Lifestyle change fuels obesity, but genetic factors cause more than 50% of average variations in obesity. The advent of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) has hastened the progress of polygenic obesity research. As of this writing, more than 73 obesity susceptibility loci have been identified in ethnic groups through GWAS. The identified loci explain only 2% to 4% of obesity heritability, thereby indicating that a large proportion of loci remain undiscovered. Thus, the next step is to identify and confirm novel loci, which may exhibit smaller effects and lower allele frequencies than established loci. However, achieving these tasks has been difficult for researchers. GWAS help researchers discover the causal loci. Moreover, numerous biological studies have been performed on the polygenic effects on obesity, such as studies on fat mass- and obesity-associated gene (FTO), but the role of these polygenic effects in the mechanism of obesity remains unclear. Thus, obesity-causing variations should be identified, and insights into the biology of polygenic effects on obesity are needed.