Having an apple-shaped body – where weight is centred around the abdomen – holds a higher risk, researchers have found.
Experts from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in the US found that having a genetic predisposition to ‘abdominal adiposity’ – or an apple-shaped body – was associated with a higher risk for type 2 diabetes.
The experts also revealed these people are at greater risk of coronary heart disease.
Type 2 diabetes occurs when the body does not produce enough insulin or the insulin produced does not work properly and can be linked to lifestyle factors such as being overweight.
Professor Sekar Kathiresan, senior report officer said: “People vary in their distribution of body fat – some put fat in their belly, which we call abdominal adiposity, and some in their hips and thighs.
“Abdominal adiposity has been correlated with cardiometabolic disease, but whether it actually has a role in causing those conditions was unknown.
“We tested whether genetic predisposition to abdominal adiposity was associated with the risk for type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease and found that the answer was a firm ‘yes’.”
Their study examined the pattern of gene variants associated to this body shape – in which weight is deposited around the abdomen, rather than in the hips and thighs.
Using data from a previous study that identified 48 gene variants associated with waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index – an established measure for abdominal adiposity – they developed a genetic risk score.
They then used this risk score against six previous genome studies and to individual data from the UK Biobank – assessing data on more than 400,000 people.
They found that having a genetic predisposition to abdominal adiposity is linked to significant increases in the incidence of type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease, along with increases in blood lipids, blood glucose and systolic blood pressure.
Connor Emdin, study lead author of the MGH Centre for Genomic Medicine, said: “The lack of association between the body type genetic risk score and confounding factors such as diet and smoking provides strong evidence that abdominal adiposity itself contributes to causing type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
“Not only do these results allow us to use body shape as a marker for increased cardiometabolic risk, they also suggest that developing drugs that modify fat distribution may help prevent these diseases.
“Future research also could identify individual genes that could be targeted to improve body fat distribution to reduce these risks.”
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