The current review of adolescent obesity: the role of genetic factors

Abstract Obesity, a complex, multi-factor and heterogeneous condition, is thought to result from the interaction of environmental and genetic factors. Considering the result of adolescence obesity in adulthood, the role of genetic factors comes to the fore. Recently, many genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have been conducted and many loci associated with adiposity have been identified. In adolescents, the strongest association with obesity has been found in single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in the FTO gene. Besides FTO , GWAS showed consistent effects between variants in MC4R, TMEM18, TNNI3K, SEC16B, GNPDA2 , POMC and obesity. However, these variants may not have similar effects for all ethnic groups. Although recently genetic factors are considered to contribute to obesity, relatively little is known about the specific loci related to obesity and the mechanisms by which they cause obesity.