THURSDAY, July 29 (HealthDay News) -- The discriminative value of 20 validated common genetic variants associated with obesity is too weak for clinical practice use; however, when added to conventional nongenetic risk factors, they increase the discrimination ability, according to a study published in the July issue of Diabetes.

Camilla Helene Sandholt, of the Hagedorn Research Institute in Gentofte, Denmark, and colleagues evaluated the combined effect of 20 validated genetic variants and their ability to discriminate between normal weight and overweight/obese individuals. The researchers genotyped 1,725 normal weight, 1,519 overweight, and 681 obese individuals from the population-based Inter99 cohort for all 20 variants.

Compared to the 10 percent of individuals in the study who carried fewer than 14 risk-alleles, the researchers found that the 10 percent of individuals in the study who carried more than 22 risk-alleles had a significant increase in the probability of being both overweight (odds ratio, 2.00) and obese (odds ratio, 2.62). Using the 20 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), the discrimination ability, as measured by the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve, was 0.53 for overweight and 0.58 for obesity. When combining the SNP data with conventional nongenetic risk factors of obesity, discrimination ability increased to 0.64 for overweight and 0.69 for obesity, with the latter significantly higher compared to nongenetic factors alone.

"The discriminative value of the 20 SNPs on obesity is low compared with conventional risk factors but contributes significantly when combined with conventional risk factors," the authors write.

The Inter99 project was funded in part by Novo Nordisk, which employs two study authors.

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