Unicode SystemsGenes to be blamed for hip or belly fat
The age-old mystery of why women store fat in their hips and men in their bellies has been answered.
It was found by a study that men are prone to numerous obesity-related diseases including diabetes and heart disease since visceral or belly fat has been associated with the complications. Women, on the other hand, are usually guarded from obesity-related disorders faced by men until menopause, according to UTSMC release.
From in.news.yahoo.com:
‘We found that out of about 40,000 mouse genes, only 138 are commonly found in both male and female fat cells,’ said Deborah Clegg, assistant professor of internal medicine at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre (UTSMC) and senior study author.
‘This was completely unexpected. We expected the exact opposite – that 138 would be different and the rest would be the same between the sexes,’ Clegg added.
The study involved mice, which distribute their fat in a sexually dimorphic pattern similar to humans.
Sexual dimorphism is the systematic difference between individuals of different sex in the same species.
‘Given the difference in gene expression profiles, a female fat tissue won’t behave anything like a male fat tissue and vice versa,’ Clegg said. ‘The notion that fat cells between males and females are alike is inconsistent with our findings.’
In humans, men are more likely to carry extra weight around their guts while pre-menopausal women store it in their thighs and hips.
These findings appeared in the International Journal of Obesity.
Related Posts
Tags: diabetes, gene expression, menopause, obesity, Sexual dimorphism