It should be emphasized early on that whilst heritable factors are known to explain much of the individual variation in risk of obesity, genetic factors identified so far explain only a small proportion of this risk. The significance of this fact encourages researchers to identify new DNA variants influencing disease predisposition, in order to further understand the disease pathology, and to develop effective therapeutic and preventive strategies. It should be also highlighted that future strategies to identify this “missing heritability” include multiple methodological approaches, existing and novel. As a powerful and successful approach, surely genome-wide association studies will identify more sensitive genes or single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that influence BMI and the risk of obesity in the future.
