Network Medicine — From Obesity to the "Diseasome" NEJM

link

Albert-László Barabási, Ph.D.
Center for Complex Network Research, Departments of Physics and Computer Science, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN.

A recent study reported that among people who carried a single copy of the high-risk allele for the FTO gene, which is associated with fat mass and obesity, the risk of obesity increased by 30%. The risk of obesity increased by 67% among people who carried two alleles, and on average they gained 3.0 kg (6.6 lb) or more.¹ Given that approximately one sixth of the population of European descent is homozygous for this allele, this link between the FTO gene and obesity appears to be one of the strongest genotype–phenotype associations detected by modern genome-screening techniques. That obesity has a genetic component is not surprising: researchers have long known that it often runs in families. In this issue of the Journal, Christakis and Fowler suggest that friends have an even more important effect on a person's risk of obesity than genes do. (...)
(...) The Human Genome Project has revolutionized gene hunting, leading to an explosion in the number of detected associations between genes and disease phenotypes. The beauty of genomewide association studies lies in their ability to quantify their own limitations. For instance, many of the newfound disease-associated genetic mutations account for only a tiny fraction of disease occurrences. There is a tendency to believe that the rest are hidden in more genes. As the article by Christakis and Fowler shows,² the answer is not always as simple as that.(...)
Aqueles que quiserem o artigo completo, me mandem mensagem para psrcoelho@gmail.com