The new study says the risk of obesity can be known through genetic scoring

extent is a person's fat and thin "born"? An international team that recently published a paper in the American journal Cell says they have developed a scoring system that evaluates obesity risk through genetic testing, predicting obesity risk with just one score.
researchers analyzed about 2.1 million common genetic variants in more than 300,000 genes and developed an obesity risk scoring system called the Multigene Risk Score after considering the possible weight effects of these mutations.
, the researchers validated the scoring system with data from about 300,000 other people. The results showed that 83 percent of adults with the highest obesity risk scores were actually overweight or obese, 17 percent were normal weight and 0.2 percent were underweight.
study also showed that the adults with the highest obesity risk scores weighed an average of 13 kilograms more than the lowest-rated adults, and that the former had a 25-fold higher risk of severe obesity.
another surprising result is that the ratings reflect a significant risk of obesity early in life. At about the age of 3, weight differences in people with different ratings began to become significant. By the age of 18, the highest-rated people weighed an average of 12 kilograms more than the lowest-scoring people.The results are not just about weight, but if a person is at higher risk of obesity, the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, high blood pressure and other diseases increases, said Sekar Caseresen, a researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital and one of the authors of the
paper. If the risk of obesity is known through genetic testing in childhood, it may help parents and doctors intervene as early as possible.
, however, this genetically based method of assessing obesity risk has also attracted much controversy. Some experts believe that it is not only genes that determine a person's weight, but also diet, exercise and other environmental factors, genetic testing alone can not accurately predict the risk of obesity. The test results may help reduce some cases of obesity, but they may also blame genes on some people at high risk of obesity, thereby self-deprecating and less motivated to change their unhealthy lifestyles. (Source: Xinhua News Agency)
relevant paper information: