FRIDAY, March 21, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Consumption of fried foods may influence the genetic association with adiposity, according to a study published March 19 in BMJ.
Qibin Qi, Ph.D., from Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, and colleagues conducted a prospective cohort study to examine the interactions between genetic predisposition and consumption of fried food in relation to body mass index (BMI) and obesity. Data were obtained from 9,623 women participating in the Nurses' Health Study; 6,379 men participating in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study; and a replication cohort of 21,421 women from the Women's Genome Health Study.
The researchers found that in both the Nurses Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study there was an interaction between fried food consumption and a genetic risk score based on 32 BMI-associated variants on BMI (P ≤ 0.001 for interaction). In the Women's Genome Health Study, the gene-diet interaction was replicated. Higher consumption of fried foods correlated with a strengthening of the genetic association with adiposity. For fried food consumption less than once, one to three times, and four or more times per week, the odds ratios for obesity per 10 risk alleles were 1.61, 2.12, and 2.72, respectively (P = 0.002 for interaction).
"Our findings suggest that consumption of fried food could interact with genetic background in relation to obesity, highlighting the particular importance of reducing fried food consumption in individuals genetically predisposed to obesity," write the authors.
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