Every second German is overweight.
Obesity is the cause of many sequellae such as hypertension, diabetes and cancer.
So far little has been known about the factors supporting overweight. She observed that genetic predisposition played indeed a major role in the development of obesity. But, she says, environmental factors such as eating habits and the extent and frequency of physical exercise are equally important. Researchers had already shown that individual changes in the mouse genome can cause obesity. This discovery suggests that also in humans such mutations might be responsible for the disease.