Abstract

GENETICS OF OBESITY: THE RISE OF NEUTROGENETICS, ASIAN ADIPOCYTES AND STRATEGY TOWARDS PREVENTING OBESITY

Atif AB, Emilia A*, Aliya S, Aamenah M, Zahri MK, Shamim AK, Gotam K,Uday YH Abdullah, Sulaiman I, Farouk RM,Esa AB Rahman, Nordin S

Abstract

Obesity has recently reported to be a pandemic. Multiple factors such as individual’s genetic susceptibility, increased availability of high caloric and energy-dense food and sedentary lifestyle are involved that contribute to the development of obesity. Although much research on obesity has been conducted for the past few decades, yet the clear understanding regarding the causes and treatment of obesity remains unclear since a comprehensive study on the field of obesity still has not been explored extensively. The emergence of nutritional genomics which combines multiple elements such as health, diet, and genomics should be the driving force of future nutritional research to provide clear understanding on how obesity develops from the perspective of molecular nutrition to the prevention of disease. However, challenges are still there to identify the real potential cause of obesity and its associated disease and the adoption of current knowledge for more applicable and personalized dietary intervention strategies to combat diet-related disease still requires a lot of effort to break the molds of traditional nutrition research concentrated on nutrient deficiencies and deterioration of health.

Keywords: Obesity, Genetics, Westernization, Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), Genes, Nutrigenomics.