Le Stunff C, Fallin D, Bougnères P
Department of Pediatric Endocrinology, Hôpital St Vincent de Paul, Paris, France.
Nat Genet. 2001 Sep;29(1):96-9. doi: 10.1038/ng707.
To identify some of the genetic factors that contribute to obesity in children of Central European and North African descent, we studied the parental transmission of alleles at the insulin locus to offspring with early-onset obesity. A variable nucleotide tandem repeat (VNTR) polymorphism upstream of the insulin gene (INS) is associated with variations in the expression of INS and the nearby gene encoding insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2). We found an excess of paternal transmission of class I VNTR alleles to obese children: children who inherited a class I allele from their father (but not those inheriting it from their mother) had a relative risk of early-onset obesity of 1.8. Due to the frequency of class I alleles in this population, this risk concerns 65-70% of all infants. These results suggest that increased in utero expression of paternal INS or IGF2 due to the class I INS VNTR allele may predispose offspring to postnatal fat deposition.
为了确定一些导致中欧和北非裔儿童肥胖的遗传因素，我们研究了胰岛素基因座上等位基因从父母向早发性肥胖后代的传递情况。胰岛素基因（INS）上游的可变核苷酸串联重复序列（VNTR）多态性与INS以及附近编码胰岛素样生长因子2（IGF2）的基因的表达变化相关。我们发现I类VNTR等位基因从父亲向肥胖儿童的传递过量：从父亲那里继承I类等位基因的儿童（而非从母亲那里继承的儿童）早发性肥胖的相对风险为1.8。由于该人群中I类等位基因的频率，这一风险涉及所有婴儿的65 - 70%。这些结果表明，由于I类INS VNTR等位基因导致的父源INS或IGF2在子宫内表达增加，可能使后代易发生出生后脂肪沉积。
