Association of FTO and PPARG polymorphisms with obesity in Portuguese women

Abstract

Fábio Ferreira Carlos,1,2 José Silva-Nunes,3,4 Orfeu Flores,1 Miguel Brito,3 Gonçalo Doria,1 Luísa Veiga,3 Pedro Viana Baptista1 1Centro de Investigação em Genética Molecular Humana, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal; 2Investigação e Serviços em Ciências Biológicas, Stab Vida, Caparica, Portugal; 3Escola Superior de Tecnologia da Saúde de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal; 4Endocrinology Department, Curry Cabral Hospital, Lisbon, Portugal Purpose: We evaluated the association between risk of obesity in the Portuguese population and two obesity-related single-nucleotide gene polymorphisms: fat-mass and obesity-associated (FTO) rs9939609 and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARG) rs1801282. Patients and methods: A total of 194 Portuguese premenopausal female Caucasians aged between 18 and 50 years (95 with body mass index [BMI] ≥30 g/m2, 99 controls with BMI 18.5–24.9 kg/m2) participated in this study. The association of the single-nucleotide polymorphisms with obesity was determined by odds ratio calculation with 95% confidence intervals. Results: Significant differences in allelic expression of FTO rs9939609 (P0.05). Conclusion: For the first time, a study involving an adult Portuguese population shows that individuals harboring both risk alleles in the FTO gene locus are at higher risk for obesity, which is in agreement to what has been reported for other European populations. Keywords: rs9939609, rs1801282, BMI, SNP, odds ratio