Whole-exome Sequencing in Childhood Obesity

Obesity is a complex multifactorial disease where genetics play an important role in predisposing children to early onset obesity. Though many obesity susceptible genes and variants have been identified with obesity, the most common obesity gene, MC4R only accounts for 5% of all early onset obesity cases. This implies that there may be more obesity related genes and variants that need to be unravelled to further delineate the relationship between obesity and genetics. The investigators propose in screening the exonic regions of all the genes in obese subjects using whole-exome sequencing (WES) to discover novel obesity related variants and genes. Primary hypothesis The investigators hypothesized that our paediatric subjects with early-onset severe obesity will have strong genetic predisposition and therefore the cohort would be enriched with obesity susceptibility genetic variants. Secondary hypothesis The investigators hypothesized that there is increasing prevalence of, and possibly worsening, obesity-related complications (namely glucose intolerance, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease) in our severely obese children, as compared to 15 years ago, due to an increasingly obesogenic environment promoting unhealthy lifestyle and eating habits.