Abstract
Investigations on the impact of genetic factors on the development of obesity have been limited regarding the Roma population—the largest and most vulnerable ethnic minority in Europe of Asian origin. Genetic variants identified from genetic association studies are primarily from European populations. With that in mind, we investigated the applicability of data on selected obesity-related single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), obtained from the Hungarian general (HG) population of European origin, on the Hungarian Roma (HR) population. Twenty preselected SNPs in susceptible alleles, known to be significantly associated with obesity-related phenotypes, were used to estimate the effect of these SNPs on body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) in HG (N = 1783) and HR (N = 1225) populations. Single SNP associations were tested using linear and logistic regression models, adjusted for known covariates. Out of 20 SNPs, four located in FTO (rs1121980, rs1558902, rs9939609, and rs9941349) showed strong association with BMI and WC as continuous variables in both samples. Computations based on Adult Treatment Panel III (ATPIII) and the International Diabetes Federation’s (IDF) European and Asian criteria showed rs9941349 in FTO to be associated only with WC among both populations, and two SNPs (rs2867125, rs6548238) in TMEM18 associated with WC only in HG population. A substantial difference (both in direction and effect size) was observed only in the case of rs1801282 in PPARγ on WC as a continuous outcome. Findings suggest that genetic risk scores based on counting SNPs with relatively high effect sizes, defined based on populations with European ancestry, can sufficiently allow estimation of genetic susceptibility for Roma. Further studies are needed to clarify the role of SNP(s) with protective effect(s).
Highlights
Roma constitute the largest ethnic minority population in Europe [1] and have been a major focus of ethnicity-based studies in past decades [2]
Out of the twenty single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) involved in the present analysis, nine showed no significant association with any obesity- or waist circumference (WC)-related phenotype in neither of the populations under investigation (namely rs10938397 (GNPDA2), rs1137101 (LEPR), rs1501299, rs2241766 (ADIPOQ), rs17782313 (MC4R), rs6265, rs925946 (BDNF), rs659366, and rs660339 (UCP2))
Our findings suggest that effect size measures of the most important obesity-related SNPs, even if they were defined based on European populations, are applicable in studies designed to estimate the obesity risk among Roma
Summary
Roma constitute the largest ethnic minority population in Europe (estimated to be between 12 and16 million) [1] and have been a major focus of ethnicity-based studies in past decades [2]. Roma constitute the largest ethnic minority population in Europe The current hypothesis argues that Roma, living mainly in Europe, migrated from South Asia through the Balkans to European countries more than a thousand years ago [3,4]. The ancestral group or geographic region within South Asia that is most closely related to the ancestral population of the Roma is still a subject of speculation [9]. Health and well-being statistics of the Roma minority appear relatively worse, compared to that of the host majority populations, independently of the country where they live, usually in disadvantaged conditions (frequently in segregated colonies) [10,11,12,13,14]. Hungary is one of the countries in which the representation of Roma is over 8% of the total population, and this proportion is likely to increase in the near future due to high population growth rate among Roma and the opposite, i.e., a decreasing fertility rate, among the majority population [15]
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