Relationship between Genetic Suceptibility, Obesity, and...

TYPE 2 DIABETES MELLITUS (T2DM) This type of diabetes commonly occurs in the later stage of life but due to increase in obesity; it also occurs in young adult. Type 2 diabetes can be defined as insulin resistant and insulin deficiency in the blood stream. OBESITY Obesity can be defined as been overweight with excess accumulated body fat by subcutaneously and viscerally; resulting in a high body mass index (BMI) which has negative effects on health (Taylor et al, 2010). BMI is defined by dividing an individual’s weight in kilogram by the square of the individual’s height in meters (kg/m2) which indicates if the individual is underweight, overweight or obese; having a BMI equal to or more than 25kg/m2 is classed as overweight while having a†¦show more content†¦This shows that an increasing number of the British public are suffering from obesity. GENETIC PREDISPOSITION Ji and Friedman (2007) state that obesity or overweight can be due to rich fat food consumption and is influenced by a genetic predisposition in humans. As explained above, type 2 diabetes is a multifactorial disease that is influenced by various genetic and ecological factors. Genetic or inherited factors help determine human’s susceptibility to Type 2 diabetes and obesity is an ecological risk factor in developing diabetes type 2 (Park, 2011). The combination of inherited susceptibility with ecological factors can generate a positive energy balance, which produces an excessive amount of adipose tissues; containing accumulated fats that influence the development of type 2 diabetes (Ji and Friedman, 2007). Genetically, research shows that Type 2 diabetes mostly occur in family with genealogy of the disease and often connotes children have 40% probability of developing Type 2 diabetes if their parent is a carrier (Park, 2011). Multifactorial disease such as Type 2 diabetes; Candidate gene association study (CGAS) and Genome wide association study (GWAS) are methods used to identify genes associated with specified disease and the studies found evidence that certain genes