A new study found that fat stored in the abdomen (theâ€apple†shape) increases the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
The study also found that fat stored in the hips, thighs and buttock (the “pear†shape) may actually protect against these diseases.
The new undertaking was published in the weekend reports of a large-scale genetic study that identified 13 new genes associated with body fat distribution, seven of which appear to have stronger effects in women than in men.
The study appeared in the Oct. 10, 2010 online issue Nature Genetics.
Dr. Cecilia Lindgren, of the Wellcome Trust Center for Human Genetics at Oxford University in the United Kingdom (UK) and her co-authors are members of an international consortium comprising 400 scientists from 280 research institutions worldwide.
Dr. Lindgren said the waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), a measure of body fat distribution, is now well-established as a risk factor in these diseases, independently of body mass index (BMI), a measure of obesity that compares weight to height.
But while there is evidence that WHR can run in families, little was known about the genes involved, she said.
Lindgren and colleagues said that in their investigation, they conducted a meta-analysis of large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to find gene variants that might be strongly linked to WHR.
A meta-analysis is a way of pooling results from several studies and treating them statistically as if they came from one large study.) p>She said they pooled data on 77,000 participants from 32 studies and checked their results against data from another 29 studies covering over 113,500 participants.
The data showed 14 gene regions were linked to waist-to-hip ratio, confirming one that had already been discovered, but revealing 13 that had not been linked to this measure of body fat distribution before. - PNA
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