Eithne Donnellan,
Health Correspondent
Why do people who are grossly overweight find it so hard to get themselves down to a healthy weight?
This searching question is one of a number which will be studied over the next five years as part of a new €11.7 million European research project announced yesterday. The study on diabetes and obesity, entitled Diabesity, will be co-ordinated from Gothenberg, Sweden, and will involve researchers at several European centres, including Trinity College and St James's Hospital in Dublin.
Prof John Nolan of the Dublin Molecular Medicine Centre at TCD said he feels biological factors may explain why overweight people find it difficult to lose weight.
He is looking forward to participating in the research, which he says is extremely important given the increase in the rate of obesity in the Republic and elsewhere and the related increase in type 2 diabetes.
"New research on obesity shows that weight loss doesn't only depend on the individual's will power. In order to stop the obesity epidemic we also need good medical treatments. The first step in developing such medicines is to understand how the body's own hormones regulate appetite and body weight," Prof Nolan said.
The rising levels of obesity and type 2 diabetes, he believes, are driven by environmental factors and at TCD they will be attempting to isolate which genes are affected by the environment.
"Obesity and its consequences, particularly type 2 diabetes, is a large and serious problem today. One billion people in the world are overweight and 300 million are obese. In Ireland, there has been an alarming increase in both obesity and diabetes in the past 10 years.
"Obesity-related type 2 diabetes is presenting at younger ages than in the past and is now seen in young teenagers in Ireland. Approximately 85 per cent of patients with type 2 diabetes are obese," he said.
Prof Nolan added that neither dieting nor currently available drug treatments are effective in achieving sustained weight reduction in more than a minority of subjects. "The only effective treatment is bariatric surgery but this carries considerable risks and is not widely applicable."
The researchers' goal is to find four to five new genetic targets in the body which can be influenced by medicines to treat or cure obesity and diabetes.