\n <\/p>\n
The MC4R gene promotes gain of fat tissue (pictured, artificially coloured fat cells) but suppresses cholesterol levels.<\/span>Credit: Steve Gschmeissner\/SPL<\/span><\/p>\n A gene that causes obesity is paradoxically linked to a reduced risk of having heart disease and high cholesterol, according to an analysis of thousands of people with obesity.<\/p>\n Obesity is often associated with high levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or \u2018bad\u2019 cholesterol, and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. But the new results, published on 16 October in Nature Medicine1, reveal that people with obesity due to relatively rare forms of a gene called MC4R have lower levels of LDL cholesterol and reduced rates of heart disease than do peers with a similar body-mass-index.<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough the obesity is quite severe in mutation carriers, their risk of these additional complications of obesity is reduced,\u201d says Anke Hinney, a geneticist at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, who was not involved with the study. \u201cThis is really good news.\u201d<\/p>\n The results could also point drug developers to new targets for treating high cholesterol, she says.<\/p>\n The study emerged from an effort to understand the fundamental mechanisms that regulate body weight \u2014 and why some people with obesity maintain good heart health, says study author Sadaf Farooqi, who studies metabolism at the University of Cambridge, UK.<\/p>\n These brain cells could influence how fast you eat \u2014 and when you stop<\/p>\n<\/p>\n To learn more, Farooqi and her colleagues turned to MC4R, which encodes a pivotal protein in the brain that acts as a brake on hunger. \u201cIts activation tells you to reduce food intake,\u201d she says. \u201cIf that doesn\u2019t work due to loss-of-function mutations, then you don\u2019t have the brake on and you gain weight.\u201d<\/p>\n As a result, people who carry such mutations are prone to obesity: about 1% of people with obesity \u2014 and up to 5% of children with obesity \u2014 carry mutations that impair MC4R. That amounts to roughly 1 in 300 people in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n Farooqi and her team identified hundreds of people with these mutations by analysing genetic sequences from participants in two research projects: the Genetics of Obesity Study and the UK Biobank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The MC4R gene promotes gain of fat tissue (pictured, artificially coloured fat cells) but suppresses cholesterol levels.Credit: Steve Gschmeissner\/SPL A gene that causes obesity is paradoxically linked to a reduced risk of having heart disease and high cholesterol, according to an analysis of thousands of people with obesity. Obesity is often associated with high levels<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[4391,1406,3411,933,6091],"class_list":{"0":"post-28665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-disease","9":"tag-gene","10":"tag-heart","11":"tag-obesity","12":"tag-shields"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A weighty paradox<\/h2>\n
Heart healthy<\/h2>\n