Background: The major issue to address in obesity etiology is to identify the genetic changes in the disease and their occurrence in different populations. Uncovering these genetic changes may be important in developing potential biomarkers for early diagnosis and prognosis of obesity. Among all obesity susceptibility genes studied before, convincing association has been found with variants in the FABP2 gene and this disease; however, the contributions of these genetic variants in different populations and ethnic groups are not similar. Accordingly, this study was carried out to replicate the previous findings to assess whether a missense variation (rs1799883) in this gene is associated with obesity in the Tehran Lipid and Glucose Study (TLGS) population.

Methods: A case–control study was designed to determine the possible association between rs1799883 and occurrence of obesity “in phase IV of the study between the years of 2008 to 2011”. The study group consisted of 217 subjects with body mass index (BMI, kg/m2) greater than 30 as cases and 159 healthy individual as control group (1820). All subjects were recruited among the Tehran Lipid and Glucose Study (TLGS) participants in phase IV of the study between the years of 2008 to 2011. The genomic DNA was extracted from peripheral blood leucocytes using the salting out method and subsequently subjects were genotyped for this marker using The tetra-primer amplification refractory mutation system-polymerase chain reaction (ARMS-PCR). Association of risk allele with obesity was assessed using the SPSS software, version 20 (Chicago, IL, USA).

Results: The results showed no significant differences between case and control groups in terms of allele frequency (P=0.61). According to the findings, the presence of T allele as the risk allele was not associated with increased risk of obesity in carriers of this allele compared to individuals carrying the normal allele (OR=1.17; CI%95= 0.62-2.19, P=0.61).

Conclusion: The results did not support the previous findings of an association between genetic polymorphism in the FABP2 gene and risk of obesity. However, a number of replicated studies with other ethnicity are suggested to make a conclusion about the role of this genetic polymorphisms and susceptibility to obesity in Iranian population.