VIDEO NEWS RELEASE: Physical activity to benefit people with genetic risk of obesity

Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay

Link to video and sound (details below): https://bit.ly/3f7VKJV

WHAT: Certain genes influence people's risk of obesity, but many aspects of their lives interact with those genes, and these interactions over a lifetime can drive body mass index (BMI) further up or down.

WHO: University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Office of Public Health Studies Mika Thompson, a graduate research assistant and lead author of the paper, and co-authors Catherine Pirkle, an associate professor, Fadi Youkhana, a graduate research assistant and Yan Yan Wu, an associate professor.

WHERE: Honolulu, Hawaiʻi

HOW: UH researchers used data from 6,700 participants in the Health and Retirement Study, which includes samples of black and white men and women in the U.S. who are older than age 50. They looked at factors of people’s lives that they can control, such as alcohol use, smoking and physical activity levels, and factors that they could not control, such as the income level of their family during their childhood. In addition, saliva samples were collected from the participants to test their DNA.

WHY: Thousands of genetic variations have been linked to BMI, however, individual variations only explain a small amount of people’s obesity risk. UH researchers took a different approach and used a calculation to create a genetic risk score based on many genetic variations that increase or decrease a person's obesity risk.

OTHER FACTS:

• The findings support that a person's physical activity level may have a greater impact on their health outcome for those with a higher genetic risk. Public policies determine the opportunities and choices in a person's community for physical activity, such as sidewalks, bike lanes and recreational facilities.

• The association between people's genetic risk for obesity and their BMI became weaker as people aged. This suggests that genetic risk for obesity becomes less influential in older adulthood.

• Other findings suggest links between BMI and alcohol consumption, and BMI and childhood socioeconomic status. UH researchers will further investigate these results in the future.

• Most research on genes linked to obesity has come from studies of people in Europe. More research is needed to better measure genetic risk in diverse samples from the U.S. and other regions.

SOUNDBITES:

Mika Thompson, UH Office of Public Health, graduate research assistant (11 seconds)

“Participants with a higher genetic risk of obesity benefited two times more on average from physical activity than those with a lower genetic risk.”

Thompson (10 seconds)

“These findings reinforce the importance of physical activity in reducing the consequences of genetic predisposition to obesity.”