MSU study finds out what makes Gujaratis obese and diabetic!

Vadodara: If the moment you step on a weighing scale and the meter acts crazy, don’t take the weight on your head. Blame your genes.
A genetic study has found a combination of nucleotide, identified as ‘GGTG’, responsible for obesity amongst Gujaratis. And it may also be responsible for type-2 diabetes, said a team of researchers from M S University’s Department of Biochemistry.
The researchers have detected the presence of this unique set of nucleotides (haplotype) in the adiponectin gene among obese and type-2 diabetic patients in Gujarat.
Nucleotides are the building blocks of DNA and RNA of a human body, explained Prof Rasheedunnisa Begum, who, along with professor A V Ramachandran from Zoology department, has been working on population genetics for more than 10 years now.
“My students had done genotyping of adiponectin gene in 1,000 Gujarati individuals. Of them, 500 were suffering from type-2 diabetes and the other 500 were healthy individuals,” said Begum.
The genotyping revealed that this combination of nucleotide was found to very predominantly prevalent among type-2 diabetes patients who were also obese.
Adiponectin gene synthesizes adiponectin hormone. This hormone is less in people suffering from obesity and type-2 diabetes, the professor said, adding that less hormone levels develop insulin resistance among these individuals which eventually leads to type-2 diabetes.
Research scholars involved in this work with Begum include Sayantani Pramanik Palit, Roma Patel, Shahnawaz Jadeja, Nirali Rathwa and Dr Ankit Mahajan.
The research findings have been published in Scientific Reports, a peer-reviewed reputed scientific journal.
While type-2 diabetes and obesity are a global phenomenon, its prevalence is also based on ethnicity owing primarily to food habits and lifestyle besides the genetic makeup of the ethnic groups to a certain extent.
“Adiponectin gene and its hormone on the DNA within the gene depends on ethnic variation among different populations,” said Begum, who earlier conducted a similar study among Kashmiri individuals and didn’t find any such genetic association.
“This means that GGTG is one of the genetic factors that make Gujaratis prone or at risk of becoming obese and developing type-2 diabetes,” Begum added.
Begum’s earlier collaborative study in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) was done along with Dr Swarkar Sharma and Prof Manoj K Dhar affiliated to Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, Katra and Jammu University.