Obesity, diabetes mellitus, and cancer
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Section of Endocrinology, Department of Internal Medicine, Erasmus MC, 's Gravendijkwal 230, 3015 CE Rotterdam, The Netherlands
1Cleveland Clinic Genomic Medicine Institute, 9500 Euclid Avenue, Mailstop NE-50 (Rm NE5-314), Cleveland, Ohio 44195, USA
- (Correspondence should be addressed to W W de Herder; Email: w.w.deherder{at}erasmusmc.nl)
The interaction of genomic variation with the micro- and macro-environment is believed to result in the phenotype, including disease manifestation. It is ironic that the genomic variation that has evolutionarily sustained populations exposed to long periods of famine and has been selected for is now interacting with ‘modern’ environments and may no longer result in a survival advantage. Au contraire, this genomic variation likely predisposes to obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), and over recent years has been shown to take on a new bedfellow: cancer.
In adults, obesity is defined as a body mass index (BMI) >30. A recent study demonstrated that the widely applied BMI formula (BMI=weight in pounds/(height in inches)2×703; BMI=weight in kilograms/(height in meters)2), which was developed by Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet (1796–1874), underestimates the prevalence of obesity, especially when compared to a direct measurement of percentage body fat by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry! (Shah …
