Understanding Obesity

Obesity is a significant health issue that results from both genetic factors and lifestyle choices. While your genes can influence things like appetite, metabolism, and how your body stores fat, lifestyle choices such as diet and exercise play a crucial role too. By using PRS, scientists can better understand your risk of obesity and offer personalized advice to help prevent it.

The Study

In our study, we focused on the use of PRS on obesity for people of East Asian descent, particularly those from Thailand and China, who used GeneusDNA's genetic testing service. These participants, aged 20-35, provided their genetic data and information about their height and weight. This allowed us to calculate their Body Mass Index (BMI), a common measure of obesity.

Using advanced genetic analysis tools, we examined the participants' genetic data to calculate their PRS. This score sums up the influence of many small genetic variations to estimate an individual's risk of developing obesity.

Key Findings

Our findings were clear: higher PRS scores were strongly linked to a higher risk of obesity. This was consistent across the whole group and when divided by sex. This means that PRS can effectively predict obesity risk, helping identify individuals who might benefit from early and personalized interventions.

PRS is a powerful tool in personalized medicine, especially for conditions like obesity. However, most PRS models are based on data from European populations, which raises questions about their accuracy for other groups. Our study focused on East Asians, showing that PRS can be effective across different ethnicities.

To improve the accuracy and usefulness of PRS, future research should include more diverse populations and consider additional lifestyle factors. This will help make PRS an even more reliable tool for predicting obesity and other complex diseases, leading to better, personalized healthcare for everyone.

If you are interested in more information, please see below.

https://d2aiva911kts08.cloudfront.net/geneus-research/Validation-of-Polygenic-Risk-Scores-for-obesity-in-the-East-Asian-population.pdf