Browsing by Author "Santos, Diogo Filipe Oliveira dos"
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- Gene-diet interactions on childhood obesityPublication . Santos, Diogo Filipe Oliveira dos; Oliveira, AndreiaObesity is a global epidemy and in children the number of individuals with obesity increased 2,28 times in the last three decades. Obesity comes with a massive amount of complications such as type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemia and insulin resistance. Obesity is a multifactorial disease and there many risk factors interacting in its development, genetic, behavioral and environmental factors. This paper aims to understand the genetic factors behind this disease and the interactions between the genes and diet that prompts childhood obesity. For the purpose of this paper the literature was searched in English language in the PubMed Central® search engine, totaling 110 papers. During the last decade, research has tried to understand the gene(s) responsible for the predisposition for childhood obesity, so many studies were conducted such as genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Childhood obesity appear to result from the presence of many risk gene variants, and their response to obesogenic environments. There is evidence that genes like FTO, MC4R, POMC, LEP and LEP receptor have an influence in weight gain and in the development of related complications since early ages. Diet is one of the most important environmental factors believed to contribute to obesity development. Currently, there are two approaches trying to understand interactions between genes and diet, nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics. Both are based in the premise that nutrients/diet components can influence the gene expression process and affect different metabolic pathways that finally will origin the individual’s phenotype. Most of the studies accomplished are related to fatty acids metabolism, so to further understand other metabolic pathways more studies are needed. FTO, APOA2 and NPC1 genes are some of the genes that already have some evidence supporting their interaction with dietary fat intake in weight gain, including in children for whom less evidence exists. Genome-wide association studies have increased the knowledge in this area, but they have some limitations, which means that more studies and with different approaches are needed to further understand the relation between genes and environmental factors in obesity. A more personalized diet (under prior knowledge of obesity-related polymorphisms) is currently under discussion in the scientific arena.