title: Exposing the exposures responsible for type 2 diabetes and obesity.
abstract: The rising prevalences of type 2 diabetes and obesity constitute major threats to human health globally. Powerful social and economic factors influence the distribution of these diseases among and within populations. These factors act on a substrate of individual predisposition derived from the composite effects of inherited DNA variation and a range of environmental exposures experienced throughout the life course. Although "Western" lifestyle represents a convenient catch-all culprit for such exposures, effective treatment and prevention will be informed by characterization of the most critical, causal environmental factors. In this Review, we examine how burgeoning understanding of the genetic basis of type 2 diabetes and obesity can highlight nongenetic exposures that drive development of these conditions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Sciences, Genetic and Molecular Epidemiology Unit, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden.|Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden.|Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
authors.forename: Paul W
authors.initials: PW
authors.lastname: Franks
authors.affiliation: Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. mark.mccarthy@drl.ox.ac.uk.|Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
authors.forename: Mark I
authors.initials: MI
authors.lastname: McCarthy
mesh_terms: D003924:Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2 / Q000235:genetics*; D004032:Diet; D004734:Energy Metabolism / Q000235:genetics; D004781:Environmental Exposure; D059647:Gene-Environment Interaction; D006801:Humans; D008019:Life Style; D064307:Microbiota; D009765:Obesity / Q000235:genetics*