Diabetes mellitus and obesity are heterogeneous disorders that affect up to 5-8 of the population of Western Europe. The importance of genetic factors in these disorders is well established; however, the genes involved and the defects leading to the manifestation of disease are largely unknown. Family studies are a powerful tool with which to localize chromosomal regions linked to a genetic disorder. A genome-wide search for the genes associated with susceptibility to diabetes mellitus and obesity, combines with a more-specific, candidate-gene approach, should enable the identification of the loci involved in these diseases. Once regions linked to disease are identified, positional-cloning techniques can be used to track down the gene(s) responsible.
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