British Researchers Find Genetic Clue to Severe Obesity in Children

British researchers studying 300 Caucasian children with “severe early-onset obesity” (that is, 220 pounds by age 10) discovered that rare chromosome 16 DNA deletions, which remove a gene the brain needs to respond to leptin, an appetite-controlling hormone, gave the children a “very strong drive to eat.” Elena Bochukova, et al., “Large, rare chromosomal deletions associated with severe early-onset obesity,” Nature, December 6, 2009. According to one of the researchers, these children are “very, very hungry, they always want to eat.”

Several children in the study had apparently been placed on the social services “at risk” register because authorities assumed their parents were deliberately overfeeding them. According to news sources, these children have now been removed from the register. While some medical experts cautioned that most overweight children do not have the gene deletion, they urged authorities to provide support to families with obese children. One was quoted as saying, “The fact that several of the study children have been taken out of social care and returned to their parents as a result is disturbing in itself and must surely put an end to the claims by some that childhood obesity is a simple case of parental abuse.” See BBC News, The Associated Press, USA Today, December 6, 2009.