{"id":48924,"date":"2011-05-17T17:35:20","date_gmt":"2011-05-17T22:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/?p=48924"},"modified":"2011-05-17T17:36:50","modified_gmt":"2011-05-17T22:36:50","slug":"master-switch-for-obesity-gene-found-by-scientists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/05\/master-switch-for-obesity-gene-found-by-scientists\/","title":{"rendered":"Master Switch for Obesity Gene Found by Scientists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Master Switch for Obesity Gene Found by Scientists\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-48929\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/05\/master-switch-for-obesity-gene-found-by-scientists\/obesity-9\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-48929\" title=\"Obesity\" src=\"https:\/\/www.dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/Obesity.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"220\" height=\"193\" \/><\/a>British scientists say they have found a \u201cmaster switch\u201d that may be responsible for controlling genes associated with body fat. In fact, they think their findings may help develop a treatment for obesity-related diseases.<\/p>\n<p>Upon publishing the study in the Journal &#8220;Nature Genetics,&#8221; the British researchers believe that since fat is linked to people&#8217;s susceptibility to <strong><a title=\"stress and fat\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/08\/stress-makes-us-fat\/\">metabolic diseases<\/a><\/strong> such as heart disease and diabetes, this regulating gene may be targeted in future drugs.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is the first major study that shows how small changes in one master regulator gene can cause a cascade of other metabolic effects in other genes,&#8221; said the study&#8217;s lead author Tim Spector of King&#8217;s College London.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>About one in 10 adults across the globe are obese \u2013 that&#8217;s more than 500 million! To put in perspective how groundbreaking such a drug would be, purely from a cost perspective, in the U.S. alone <strong><a title=\"obesity related diseases\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/04\/understanding-obesity-related-diseases-metabolic-syndrome\/\">obesity-related diseases<\/a><\/strong> account for 10 percent of all medical expenses. That amounts to about $147 billion a year.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers used a sample of 800 British women, analyzing over 20,000 genes in the fat samples taken. They found a link between the KLF14 gene, which scientists had already identified as being linked to <strong><a title=\"type 2 diabetes\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/04\/understanding-obesity-related-diseases-type-2-diabetes\/\">type 2 diabetes<\/a><\/strong> and cholesterol levels, and other genes found in fat tissue. They confirmed their findings by comparing the British results to 600 samples taken from subjects in Iceland.<\/p>\n<p>(via: <strong><a title=\"obesity gene\" href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/nm\/20110515\/hl_nm\/us_obesity_genes\">Yahoo! News<\/a><\/strong>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>British scientists say they have found a \u201cmaster switch\u201d that may be responsible for controlling genes associated with body fat. In fact, they think their findings may help develop a treatment for obesity-related diseases. Upon publishing the study in the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/05\/master-switch-for-obesity-gene-found-by-scientists\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3695,804],"tags":[31,10904,29,92,1432,383,1359],"class_list":["post-48924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diet-and-nutrition","category-heart-disease","tag-health-news","tag-heart-disease","tag-nutrition","tag-obesity","tag-obesity-diseases","tag-research-studies","tag-type-2-diabetes"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48924"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48949,"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48924\/revisions\/48949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}