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Your body mass index (BMI) indicates whether you are in a healthy weight range based on your height. Having a higher BMI – which means more weight compared to height – can increase the risk of developing heart disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes. Although BMI is partly determined by your environment and your lifestyle, including your diet and your level of exercise, our genes also play a role.
Genes are inherited from our parents. When this genetic information from the egg and sperm combines, the DNA is replicated continuously – doubling the number of cells until the formation of a whole baby. DNA replication is not perfect and every single base of the human genome – the unique blocks of code that make up the entire DNA strand – has the potential to be mutated to the better or worse. Importantly, this creates a huge amount of random genetic variation at the population level, which is like a huge natural genetic experiment. If we know that these random genetic changes are related to small changes in BMI, we can test whether BMI influences many different things, including cardiovascular health – as a randomized controlled trial.
In general, there are two ways to identify our DNA that are related to particular traits. Studies of patients with rare disorders related to obesity (candidate gene studies) or large-scale genomic association studies (GWAS). The results of the last of these methods – studies that seek to see if a change at any position in our DNA is related to a particular trait – have involved hundreds of common genetic variants associated with it. BMI.
A 2015 study by the Genetic Investigation of Anthropometric Traits (GIANT) consortium and published in Nature found 97 locations in our DNA that affect BMI levels and that are responsible for small differences between individuals. . were. This means that while we can not predict an individual's BMI with genetics, we can refer to genetics to understand if patterns are materializing in populations.
Small genetically modified BMI changes provide an opportunity to determine whether differences in BMI between people play a role in health and disease. Genetic mutations that are randomly distributed during conception are not easily modified by our environment and our experiences later in life. As a result, our BMI, our weight, and our chances of developing diseases related to obesity could in part be determined even before we are born.
BMI low, low risk of heart disease
Using this property of genetic variation, we undertook a study recently published in the journal Circulation. Our research has shown that a higher BMI is likely to have an influence on cardiovascular health measures, such as blood pressure, in more than 3,000 healthy young people 17 years of age. Avon longitudinal study on parents and children (children of the 90s)
The Bristol-based Children of the 90s study followed families in the United Kingdom from data collected from questionnaires , clinics and biological samples since the early 1990s. Using MRI of 400 participants aged 21 to 21, who were recruited on the basis of genetic differences of BMI, we have also demonstrated that a higher BMI is likely to structurally damage heart tissue, including an enlarged left ventricle – the main pumping chamber of the heart.
Up to now, studies have generally examined the link between BMI and cardiovascular health in adults by observing trends within populations. However, it is difficult to conclude a relationship between the two without confusing the role that lifestyle factors play or finding how cardiovascular diseases change the BMI rather than the other way around. We also wanted to isolate the property of genetic variation to improve our confidence by drawing conclusions about the relationship between BMI and cardiovascular health in a population of people.
Our results confirm the idea that a healthy and normal BMI at an early age is likely to maintain a healthy cardiovascular system and help prevent heart disease later in life. Modern genetics allows us to study the causes of the disease faster and cheaper than ever before, and the availability of genetic data in studies such as the Children of the 90s means that we can more easily overcome the limitations. traditional studies. We hope these results will lead to increased efforts to combat the obesity epidemic at all stages of life, starting at an early age.
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