Gene variants associated with body shape increase risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes
"People vary in their distribution of body fat -- some put fat in their belly, which we call abdominal adiposity, and some in their hips and thighs," says Sekar Kathiresan, MD, director of the MGH Center for Genomic Medicine, associate professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and senior author of the JAMA report. "Abdominal adiposity has been correlated with cardiometabolic disease, but whether it actually has a role in causing those conditions was unknown. We tested whether genetic predisposition to abdominal adiposity was associated with the risk for type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease and found that the answer was a firm 'yes'." While several observational studies have reported greater incidence of type 2 diabetes and heart disease among individuals with abdominal adiposity, they could not rule out the possibility that lifestyle factors -- such as diet, smoking and a lack of exercise -- were the actual causes of increased disease ris...