2023-08-31 20:00:00
Updated Thursday, August 31, 2023 – 20:00
An article in ‘Science’ points out the unanswered questions that exist after half a century of study of this complex disease that attends to multiple causes and approaches
A woman checks her body weight on a scale.SHUTTERSTOCK
A study reveals that there are multiple routes that lead to obesity, a disease that is already a pandemic and in which much progress has been made, but about which there are also many unknowns. Going deeper into the dialogue between genes and the environment and identifying subtypes of obesity are some of the lines in which it is convenient to delve to find new answers.
These are some of the conclusions of a review article that was published in the journal Sciencewhere he realizes how much researchers have learned in the last 50 years about the possible causes of obesity, but which also places emphasis on questions for which no answer has yet been found and tries to determine how to direct the focus to solve them.
The article points out that these answers will probably not be reached until there is a “genes and environment” approachrather than from a “genes versus environment” perspective, according to the researchers who signed the article, led by John R. Speakman (Laboratory of Metabolic Health, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Aberdeen , Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Medical University of China).
Thus, the authors of this paper review the main findings regarding the genetic variants associated with body mass index and metabolic pathways acting on the brain and the gastrointestinal tract and that impact on the sensation of hunger and the deposition of fat in the various tissues.
They also point out that more and more research has been done on the changes in the food environment and social factors that contribute to obesity, although they acknowledge that the specific mechanisms involved remain unknown. “Since the many environmental and genetic causes of obesity are diverse, there are many routes to the disease,” Speakman and co-authors note.
How to define subtypes and causes
A salient message from the article is that it is quite possible that there are subtypes of obesity and identifying those subtypes can be key to determine better prevention and adopt specific treatments. However, how to define these subtypes is still an unsolved objective.
Cristóbal Morales, a specialist in the Endocrinology and Nutrition service at Hospital Vithas and Hospital Virgen Macarena, in Seville, highlights the interest of the study and the depth with which it addresses the panorama of knowledge about obesity, “showing the complexity of a disease with multiple etiopathogenic causes and very different levels, some of which we don’t know yet“.
It also emphasizes the different response of each organism and that “as we have been saying there are many obesity, not just oneand the goal is also to carry out in this field a precision medicine with a increasingly personalized diagnosis and treatment“, says Morales.
fight stigma
The article “invites us to become aware that we are facing a global pandemic and continue researching, while contributing tools to combat stigma that involves obesity through a review of the wide range of causes that can condition its appearance and that have to do with biological, genetic, psychological and social factors, among others”, indicates this expert.
Mar Malagn, professor of Cellular Biology at the University of Córdoba and deputy scientific director of the Maimónides Institute for Biomedical Research (IMIBIC) of the same city, pronounces in a similar vein, who points out that the article guides us on where we need to look to better understand this complex disease.
How is body fat distributed?
For example, “we still don’t know details about how the different mechanisms involved in weight control work and we also know that, although this is an important factor because it gives an idea of how much adipose tissue exists, it is certainly not the only one because it is equally important to know how body fat is distributed“.
The article refers to the knowledge already available on the action of hormones such as leptin and its relationship with the sending of satiety signals to the brain, “but we know that other factors are also involved in this aspect that still elude us,” explains Mar Malagn.
Regulation of thermogenesis and brown adipose tissue and the relationship with the brain
The thermogenesis and action of brown adipose tissue is one of the chapters that is giving rise to more knowledge in recent years “but we still ignore many aspects about how it is regulated, especially in humans, as well as about Why does adipose tissue stop working or deregulate when it fills up with fat?“, specifies this expert.
The article also gives an account of the extensive research currently focused on the brain and its link to obesity, with evidence on the relationship between certain signals and food intake, but also with unknowns about how the brain processes all the information it receives and gives orders to the organismas well as on the regulation of reward mechanisms that can drive us to eat.
The researchers also refer to the importance of taking into account not only the amount of food eaten but also the type of nutrients and the relationship between the higher consumption of ultra-processed foods and obesity.
#genetic #trace #obesity #tackle #pandemic #21st #century