Human Molecular Genetics Advance Access originally published online on December 17, 2008
Human Molecular Genetics 2009 18(6):1140-1147; doi:10.1093/hmg/ddn431
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Association of functionally significant Melanocortin-4 but not Melanocortin-3 receptor mutations with severe adult obesity in a large North American case–control study
1 Diabetes Center 2 Cardiovascular Research Institute 3 Department of Medicine 4 Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics 5 Department of Physiological Nursing, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA 6 Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA 7 Columbia University Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (C2B2), New York, NY 10032, USA 8 U.S. Department of Energy, Joint Genome Institute, Walnut Creek, CA 94720, USA 9 Genomics Division, MS 84–171, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA 10 Division of Cardiology, University of Ottawa Heart Institute, Ottawa, Canada K1Y 4W7 11 Department of Biopharmaceutical Sciences and Institute for Human Genetics, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA
* To whom correspondence should be addressed at: Diabetes Center, University of California San Francisco, 513 Parnassus Avenue, HSW 1113, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA. Tel: +1 415 514 0530; Fax: +1 415 564 5813; Email: vaisse{at}diabetes.ucsf.edu
Received September 11, 2008; Accepted December 12, 2008
Functionally significant heterozygous mutations in the Melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4R) have been implicated in 2.5% of early onset obesity cases in European cohorts. The role of mutations in this gene in severely obese adults, particularly in smaller North American patient cohorts, has been less convincing. More recently, it has been proposed that mutations in a phylogenetically and physiologically related receptor, the Melanocortin-3 receptor (MC3R), could also be a cause of severe human obesity. The objectives of this study were to determine if mutations impairing the function of MC4R or MC3R were associated with severe obesity in North American adults. We studied MC4R and MC3R mutations detected in a total of 1821 adults (889 severely obese and 932 lean controls) from two cohorts. We systematically and comparatively evaluated the functional consequences of all mutations found in both MC4R and MC3R. The total prevalence of rare MC4R variants in severely obese North American adults was 2.25% (CI95%: 1.44–3.47) compared with 0.64% (CI95%: 0.26–1.43) in lean controls (P < 0.005). After classification of functional consequence, the prevalence of MC4R mutations with functional alterations was significantly greater when compared with controls (P < 0.005). In contrast, the prevalence of rare MC3R variants was not significantly increased in severely obese adults [0.67% (CI95%: 0.27–1.50) versus 0.32% (CI95%: 0.06–0.99)] (P = 0.332). Our results confirm that mutations in MC4R are a significant cause of severe obesity, extending this finding to North American adults. However, our data suggest that MC3R mutations are not associated with severe obesity in this population.
The authors wish it to be known that, in their opinion, the first two authors should be regarded as joint First Authors.
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