Estudio de asociación del genoma completo para identificar genes de susceptibilidad a la obesidad en adultos obesos metabólicamente sanos

Between 60%-70% of the risk of obesity appears to be heritable. Unfortunately, the exact genes involved have been difficult to identify. New technologies now exist to help researchers discover obesity susceptibility genes. One of these technologies is the Affymetrix Genome-Wide Human SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) Array 6.0 chips. SNPs are individual base pair differences in genes of different individuals, and they are the main source of human genetic diversity. The "chips" are thumbnail-size silicon surfaces that contain copies of hundreds of thousands of SNPs of the human genome (in this case around 900,000). SNP chips allow researchers to screen thousands of genes in a single experiment and compare genes of subjects with a particular disease or condition with unaffected control subjects. The investigators study utilizes SNP chips to compare the genetic profiles of obese subjects (N = 20, body mass index > 35 kg/m2) without common obesity-related co-morbidities such as diabetes mellitus or hypertension with well matched, lean controls (N = 20, body mass index 18-25 kg/m2). This is a pilot study intended to explore the following: 1) possible associations between obesity and previously unidentified obesity susceptibility genes; 2) associations between known obesity genes and obesity risk in subjects without obesity-related metabolic co-morbidities; and 3) how well our genetic data conform to other studies in similar populations as a way of assessing if the investigators have identified a representative cohort of obese subjects.