A depiction of the double helical
structure of DNA. Its four coding units (A, T, C, G) are color-coded in pink,
orange, purple and yellow. Credit: NHGRI
One Bay Area company
aims to provide answers.
Mountain View's
23andMe, which sells personal DNA-testing kits, has announced a large-scale
study intended to uncover the genetic reasons why diet and exercise have
different effects on different people.
The
company said it will recruit for the study 100,000 of its customers who are
overweight, but in otherwise good health. Scientists know lifestyle,
environment and genetics all play a role in a person's weight,
but how those influences work together is poorly understood, 23andMe said.
"We'd
like to better understand the genetic, demographic, psychosocial and behavioral
characteristics that predict weight loss
success overall, and
on different lifestyle interventions," said Liana Del Gobbo, 23andMe's
lead scientist on the study. "This will help us begin to pave the way
toward more personalized lifestyle recommendations."
The
company, co-founded in 2006 by entrepreneur Anne Wojcicki, biologist Linda Avey
and business executive Paul Cusenza, called the 100,000-participant size of its
study "unprecedented" and said researchers would look into "the
effectiveness of using different diets or exercise to lose weight."
Participants'
complete sets of DNA will be studied, to tease out genetic variations that may
affect physical responses to diet and exercise.
Previous
genetics-based research has focused on the body mass index—which uses gender,
height and weight to try to quantify body fat levels—but none has explored
"behavioral weight loss," which largely revolves around diet and
exercise, according to 23andMe.
"This
is important because the genetic variants that influence BMI may not be the
same as those that influence weight loss,"
the company said.
Participants
in the study—recruited from existing customers who have already agreed to be
research subjects—will be randomly assigned to one of three regimes: One group
will shun carbohydrates, one will eat more fiber but avoid animal fat, and one
will eat as usual but add exercise, according to the MIT Technology Review.
"They'll
report back to the company about how often they have 'cravings,' whether
they're stressed, and if they succeed in following the diets," according
to the Technology Review. "The company thinks that people, on average,
will have roughly the same results on all the plans. What it may be able to
figure out, though, is whether there are genetic or personal reasons why some individuals
will end up losing 40 pounds, and others gaining 10, no matter which advice
they follow."
While
23andMe's DNA-testing kits are popular among consumers, they have also
attracted criticism.
"It
is a mechanism meant to be a front end for a massive information-gathering
operation against an unwitting public," New York University professor and
science journalist Charles Seife wrote in Scientific
American in 2013.
The company did not respond immediately to a
request for an explanation about how it uses customers' data or whether it
sells any of that data to third parties.
However,
23andMe has clearly conducted work in the public interest, including
Parkinson's disease research in collaboration with the U.S. National Institutes
of Health and South San Francisco's Genentech, which found 17 new genetic
variants linked to the often devastating affliction, according to a paper
published in the journal Nature in September.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-12-dna-testing-kit-company-huge-weight-loss.html
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