Obesity, a Gene Review

Abstract

Obesity has become during the past decades a worldwide pandemic, affecting individuals of all ages, races, sexes and coming from different social and natural environments. The genetic factor has been identified as playing a major role in the etiopathogenesis of obesity. More and more genes are discovered to be involved in the onset of this disorder and at the same time more and more genetic syndromes and rare diseases show obesity among their major clinical features. This review describes the main genes associated with obesity in humans and indicates the main genetic syndromes with obesity that mutations or abnormal variants of these genes may cause.