Frequency Study of the FTO and ADRB3 Genotypes in a Romanian Cohort of Obese Children

The human population worldwide has showed during the past years an alarming increase in the incidence of obesity in all races, sexes, social, cultural, religious, or geographic environments. Romanian population has adopted generally the Western countries' lifestyle and presently is one of the leader countries in the high incidence in obesity, especially in childhood obesity. This study is a first approach of genotyping in a selected Romanian cohort comprising adults and children for two genes related both to energy accumulation and expenditure, respectively: FTO rs9939609 and ADRB3 rs4994. The results showed that although statistically significant in both groups, the FTO allele A was more associated with obesity in adults than in children. The FTO rs9939609 polymorphism is a common SNP in our Romanian study group, its mutant A allele showing a higher frequency than the worldwide rates. The selected ADRB3 polymorphism is a rare genetic variant in our Romanian cohort: its C allele has shown correlations, although not statistical, with obesity susceptibility, all of the heterozygous (TC) individuals belonging to obese groups, while no homozygous mutant (CC) subjects were reported. Although rare, the ADRB3 mutant frequency was higher in our Romanian groups than in the reported worldwide population. In contrast with the FTO genotype, the ADRB3 genotyping showed a higher association with the predisposition for obesity in children than in adults in our cohort.