The latest landmark discovery in genetic studies comes as discovery of 18 new genes linked with obesity and 13 that affect fat distribution.

Joel Hirschhorn, associate professor of Genetics said, “Different people have different susceptibilities to obesity. Some don’t rigorously watch what they eat or how much they exercise and still resist gaining weight, while others constantly struggle to keep their weight from skyrocketing. Some of this variability is genetic, and our goal was to increase understanding of why different people have different inherited susceptibility to obesity.”

The study was aimed at searching for genetic determinants of body mass index (BMI) and sorted the same to be a total of 32 sites linked with BMI.

It was also seen that one among the variants encodes for a receptor protein that influences insulin levels and metabolism, while the other is a gene known to encode proteins affecting appetite.

Elizabeth K Speliotes said, the work is aimed at unveiling the underlying biological truths of obesity which are ‘varied and largely uncharacterized.’

Meanwhile it was stated those who carry more than 38 BMI-increasing variants were on average 15-20lbs bulkier when compared to the ones having 22 variants.