Congratulations to all involved in an exciting new publication from a team which includes our recent Obesity Prize for Excellence Prize Winner Ruth Loos. This work, led by Roelof Smit, develops a novel genetic score for obesity, developed from genetic data from over 5 million people.
This new multi-ancestry polygenic score (PGS) more than doubles the predictive power for BMI, explaining 17.6% of the variation in BMI among UK Biobank participants of European ancestry.
The PGS is associated with BMI from an early age, showing stronger effects into adolescence. It is particularly valuable for predicting adult BMI. In addition, two clinical trials demonstrated that people with a higher PGS achieved greater weight loss during the first year but had a higher risk of weight regain. This improved understanding of which genes contribute to higher weight may help with childhood obesity prevention.
Read the full article open access: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-025-03827-z
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-025-03827-z.pdf