Research
Hormonal
Genetic variants (e.g., FTO, MC4R) influence the response to obesity treatments, including lifestyle interventions, pharmacotherapy, and bariatric surgery, with some variants predicting poorer weight loss outcomes after certain procedures.
If you are considering bariatric surgery, discuss your genetic risk (e.g., FTO status) with your surgeon. Some genetic variants may predict poorer outcomes with gastric banding, suggesting that gastric bypass might be a more effective option for you.
GoodSupportsMEDIUM confidence
Thus, obesity predisposing genes modulate the response to therapeutic options in terms of weight loss suggesting that genetic diagnosis combined with a genomic personalized medicine approach is a plausible strategy in order to design and implement the most suitable treatment and to achieve higher rates of therapeutic success.
Why this rating
Based on multiple studies showing gene-treatment interactions, though sample sizes for some specific gene-treatment pairs are small.
Source
Genetics of Obesity: What have we Learned?
Hélène Choquet et al. · Current Genomics · 2011
DOI 10.2174/138920211795677895
narrative_reviewCited 232×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Genetic predisposition to obesity, particularly variants in FTO and MC4R, increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and certain cancers primarily through its effect on BMI, establishing a causal link between obesity and these comorbidities.Strong
- High levels of physical activity can blunt the effect of obesity-predisposing genetic variants (specifically FTO) on BMI and obesity risk, reducing the genetic predisposition by approximately 40%.Good
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