We all want
to feel good and beautiful—and skincare is part of that effort. In my
past posts, I have discussed the relationship between the skincare and exercise
as well as the skincare and obesity. Obesity and its cause have always
been a personal interest of mine.
A recent
article from Science Daily (Dec. 19, 2014) reports that a person’s year of
birth impacts the person’s chance of being obese. Fat mass and
obesity-associated protein also known
as alpha-ketoglutarate-dependent dioxygenase FTO is an enzyme that
in humans is encoded by the FTO gene located on chromosome
16. In
a recent published article on the journal PNAS, a multi-institutional research
team reports that a variant of FTO gene that previous research has linked to
obesity risk largely depends on birth year. No correlation between gene
variant and obesity in study participants born in earlier years has been
observed. In comparison, a far stronger correlation than previously
reported has been observed for those born in later years.
The research
team analyzed data from participants in the Framingham Offspring Study -- which
follows the children of participants in the original study -- gathered between
1971, when participants ranged in age from 27 to 63, and 2008. The
authors found that the correlation between the best known obesity-associated
gene variant and body mass index increased significantly as the year of birth
of participants increased.
Looking at
the relationships between participants' body mass index (BMI), as measured
eight times during the study period, the FTO variants the study participants
had inherited and when they were born revealed that the previously reported association
between a specific FTO variant and BMI was seen, on average, only in
participants born in later years. While there was no correlation between
the obesity-risk variant and BMI for those born before 1942, in participants
born after 1942 the correlation was twice as strong as reported in previous
studies.
So the
message is that—for pretty much all of us, we are doomed to be obese—therefore,
we all need to work extra hard to stay fit and healthy.
PNAS Journal Reference: James Niels Rosenquist, Steven F. Lehrer, A. James
O’malley, Alan M. Zaslavsky, Jordan W. Smoller, and Nicholas A. Christakis. Cohort of birth modifies the association between FTO
genotype and BMI. PNAS,
December 2014 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1411893111
Thanks for
reading.
Connie
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