The companies plan to build on these pioneering discoveries to develop novel and effective drugs that can alleviate and possibly prevent the serious personal and societal toll exacted by these conditions. With these announcements, deCODE has achieved eleven milestones under the two companies' gene and drug discovery alliance. Obesity Approximately one-quarter of the total U.S. and European adult population is overweight, as are a rapidly increasing number of children. In addition to inherited predisposition, unbalanced diet and insufficient exercise play important roles in this complex disorder.
Obesity is a leading risk factor for a wide range of cardiovascular and other serious diseases.
Thus, deCODE researchers have also located a gene variant that appears to protect obese individuals from type-2 diabetes, an otherwise feared complication. It may provide an exciting target for further gene and drug discovery. They encompass a constellation of conditions, including panic disorder, phobic disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and general anxiety disorder. Anxiety disorders also exhibit diverse and complex interactions between environmental and genetic factors and often accompany other mental illnesses such as depression. Leveraging deCODE's ability to conduct genome-wide linkage studies using large extended families from across the population, the company's scientists were able to approach anxiety as a broadly defined disorder that encompasses all of these complexities.