Interaction between Metabolic Genetic Risk Score and Dietary Fatty Acid Intake on Central Obesity in a Ghanaian Population.

Sooad Alsulami,Julie A. Lovegrove,Kamila Dudek,Karani Santhanakrishnan Vimaleswaran,David A. Nyakotey,Reginald A. Annan,Basma Ellahi,Abdul-Malik Bawah

doi:10.3390/nu12071906

Abstract

Obesity is a multifactorial condition arising from the interaction between genetic and lifestyle factors. We aimed to assess the impact of lifestyle and genetic factors on obesity-related traits in 302 healthy Ghanaian adults. Dietary intake and physical activity were assessed using a 3 day repeated 24 h dietary recall and global physical activity questionnaire, respectively. Twelve single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were used to construct 4-SNP, 8-SNP and 12-SNP genetic risk scores (GRSs). The 4-SNP GRS showed significant interactions with dietary fat intakes on waist circumference (WC) (Total fat, Pinteraction = 0.01; saturated fatty acids (SFA), Pinteraction = 0.02; polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), Pinteraction = 0.01 and monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA), Pinteraction = 0.01). Among individuals with higher intakes of total fat (>47 g/d), SFA (>14 g/d), PUFA (>16 g/d) and MUFA (>16 g/d), individuals with ≥3 risk alleles had a significantly higher WC compared to those with <3 risk alleles. This is the first study of its kind in this population, suggesting that a higher consumption of dietary fatty acid may have the potential to increase the genetic susceptibility of becoming centrally obese. These results support the general dietary recommendations to decrease the intakes of total fat and SFA, to reduce the risk of obesity, particularly in individuals with a higher genetic predisposition to central obesity.

Highlights

Obesity is a known risk factor for several health conditions, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, hypertension and cancer, and it is considered as an increasing public health problem worldwide, including in Africa [1,2]
We found that none of the metabolic genetic risk score (GRS) were significantly associated with obesity-related traits in the Ghanaian population, which contradicts the findings of the previous GRS-related studies in European and African populations [15,25,26,27,28,29,30,32,33]
Our study has shown that higher intakes of total fat, saturated fatty acids (SFA), monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA) and polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) can increase the genetic risk on waist circumference (WC) in Ghanaian adults

Summary

Introduction

Obesity is a known risk factor for several health conditions, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, hypertension and cancer, and it is considered as an increasing public health problem worldwide, including in Africa [1,2]. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in European populations have revealed more than 100 loci to be associated with the body mass index (BMI) [12,13,14,15,16,17,18]. These genetic associations have not been consistently replicated in African populations [19,20,21,22,23], which could be attributed to differences in lifestyle and genetic architecture [24]

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