
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, May 24, 1990                   TAG: 9005240382
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: From The Washington Post and The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

WEIGHT LARGELY YOUR GENETIC FATE, SCIENTISTS FIND

When it comes to gaining weight, who you are matters more than how much you eat. Clothes may make the man, but it's genes that make the waistline, according to two new studies published today.

One study confirms what almost everyone has long suspected: People can eat identical meals and some will gain more weight than others. According to the study, one person can put on up to three times as much weight as another.

The second study shows that if you're fat, you can't blame it all on your mother for overfeeding you as a child. That study shows that sets of identical twins who were separated and raised in different families, on widely different diets, still grew up to weigh about the same.

Together the studies, published in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, contain the strongest evidence yet that the genes a person inherits are the dominant factor determining whether that person is fat, lean or in between. No one knows what the genes do in detail but they presumably set metabolic rates and lay the body's strategy for handling extra calories.

So striking were the findings that some researchers who conducted the studies said they were worried about sending too gloomy a message to overweight people.

On the contrary, said Albert J. Stunkard, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania and author of one of the reports, the conclusions should console those whose extra pounds have been blamed on lack of willpower or on supposed hidden psychological needs.

Diet and exercise will work to modify the genetic effect, he said, but people who are overweight can now be told, "It's very largely due to your genes. You have a specific vulnerability. You're much more vulnerable than other people."

In one study, researchers at Quebec's Laval University confined pairs of male identical twins for 100 days. Each twin ate a diet that contained 1,000 extra calories a day, and exercise was forbidden.

The members of each pair of identical twins gained similar amounts of weight. The variation among pairs was three times as great as the differences seen between members of the same pair.

The researchers found even wider variations when they measured whether extra fat showed up on the men's middles or on their hips and thighs. Identical twins tended to gain weight in identical places. The variation among the pairs with respect to fat distribution was six times greater than that within pairs, said Claude Bouchard, a professor of exercise physiology and the study's principal author.

In Stunkard's study, the most striking finding was that pairs of adult identical twins who had been raised in different families were just as similar as pairs raised together. "The early family rearing environment apparently had no effect at all" on adult weight, Stunkard said.

by CNB