It's no secret that being obese can be linked to a number of health issues. A new study has found that having excessive weight and body fat can directly be associated with a range of heart and blood vessel diseases. A method called the Mendelian randomisation was used to determine the result of this study. Mendelian randomization is a method of using measured variation in genes of known function to examine the causal effect of a modifiable exposure on disease in observational studies.
In simpler words, this method tries to figure out whether genetic variants that are known to be associated with risk factors can actually cause disease in an individual. Susanna Larsson, associate professor and senior researcher at the Karolinska Institute led the research wherein 96 genetic variants were studied to estimate their effect on 14 cardiovascular diseases in 367,703 participants all of whom were aged between 40-69 years.
She said, "The causal association between BMI and fat mass and several heart and blood vessel diseases, in particular aortic valve stenosis, was unknown. Using Mendelian randomisation we found that higher BMI and fat mass are associated with an increased risk of aortic valve stenosis and most other cardiovascular diseases, suggesting that excess body fat is a cause of cardiovascular disease."
"Our genes can make us somewhat more predisposed to gain body weight but lifestyle factors, such as overeating and lack of physical activity, are the major determinants of overweight. A healthy diet is the cornerstone of cardiovascular disease prevention, and how much we eat should be limited to the amount of energy required to maintain a healthy body weight, which is a BMI of between 20 to 25 kg/m2. People who are predisposed to a higher BMI may need to work a bit harder to maintain a healthy weight," said another professor.
This proves that even though people with such genetic disposition could be at a higher risk of developing diseases, their lifestyle also played an important role in how likely they were to develop the disease. However, the researchers also said that despite the fact that their participant group was mostly from Europe which rules out the possibility of bias, there could still be more characteristics that could cause diseases.
But nevertheless, these people who had genetic variants that predict higher BMI were at increased risk of aortic valve stenosis, heart failure, deep vein thrombosis, high blood pressure, peripheral artery disease, coronary artery disease, atrial fibrillation and pulmonary embolism.
With aortic valve stenosis, the valve of the heart gets damaged due to which the heart has to work harder to pump enough blood out to circulate around the body. If that doesn't work properly the blood can get backed up in other parts of the heart and even the lung. Due to this, a person may experience shortness of breath, tiredness, fainting, chest pain and an irregular heartbeat. Stay tuned for more updates.
