الفهرس 
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Abstract
Obesity is a medical condition caused by an imbalance be-tween energy intake and expenditure, leading to an accumula-tion of excess body fat. It is also defined as having a BMI of 30 kg/m2 or higher. The WHO has recognized obesity as a ma-jor public health challenge because of its negative effects, such as hypertension, type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, and cardi-ovascular diseases. These harmful impacts and increased rates of obesity place a significant burden on society.
Obesity has increased worldwide, including in the Arab world and Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt, and influ-ences individuals of all ages, races, and socioeconomic status-es. It is primarily a result of modern sedentary lifestyles and overeating; however, genetic predisposition significantly im-pacts the imbalance in energy metabolism, with heritability es-timates ranging between 40% and 70%.
The present study aimed to evaluate the expression level of energy metabolism-related genes (SREBP-1c, FASN, AMPK, and UCP-2) in the subcutaneous adipose tissue of obese indi-viduals, examine the correlation of their expressions with BMI and lipid profile parameters, and identify the potential of these genes as early biomarkers for obesity and related diseases like hypertension and type 2diabetes.
This study included 90 participants, aged 30-45, who were classified as obese (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2) and normal-weight indi-viduals (BMI 18.5–24.9 kg/m2). The control group consisted of twenty healthy and normal-weight individuals. The 70 obese participants were divided into three groups:
• group I included 34 obese subjects without diabetes or hy-pertension.
• group II consisted of 16 obese participants with hyperten-sion.
• group III included 20 obese individuals with type 2 diabe-tes.
All study participants were subjected to the followings:
• A detailed questionnaire that included age, gender, socioec-onomic status, and past and present medical history.
• Clinical examinations, including blood pressure measure-ments and height and weight measurements for calculating BMI.
• Laboratory investigations include liver and kidney function tests, fasting blood glucose, insulin levels, and estimation of lipid profile parameters.
• The expression level of the targeted genes was measured us-ing a real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction.
The results of this study showed that:
• There was a significant difference in weight and BMI among the studied groups, where obese group III displayed the highest mean value in comparison to the other groups.
• There were significant differences in TC, TGs, HDL-c, LDL-c, FBG, insulin levels, and HOMA-IR among the groups, with obese group III exhibiting the highest mean values for TC, TGs, LDL-c, FBG, insulin, and HOMA-IR compared to the other groups.
• The obese groups exhibited significantly higher mRNA lev-els of SREBP-1c, FASN, UCP-2, and AMPK compared to the control group.
• UCP-2 and AMPK mRNA levels demonstrated statistically significant differences among the obese groups.
• There was a statistically significant positive correlation ob-served between SREBP-1c and BMI, while FASN showed a significant positive correlation with TC and TGs in obese group I.
• SREBP-1c exhibited a significant positive correlation with BMI and TC, while UCP-2 had significant negative correla-tions with insulin and HOMA-IR in obese group III.
• The ROC curve showed that SREBP-1c, UCP-2, FASN, and AMPK genes exhibited high accuracy in differentiating obese group I from normal-weight controls.
• The FASN gene revealed a good performance in distin-guishing obese subjects with hypertension (group II) from obese subjects in group I. However, the combination of FASN with UCP-2 genes showed better discriminatory abil-ity compared to using FASN alone.
• The AMPK and UCP-2 genes had good accuracy in differ-entiating obese individuals with diabetes (group III) from obese individuals in group I. On the other hand, combining UCP-2 with AMPK demonstrated better discriminatory power than utilizing either UCP-2 or AMPK individually.
The study findings suggested that:
• SREBP-1c, UCP-2, FASN, and AMPK genes may contrib-ute significantly to obesity development and can be consid-ered early biomarkers to assess an individual’s predisposi-tion to obesity risk.
• Combination of the AMPK with UCP-2 could be used to predict the risk of type 2 diabetes in obese individuals, whereas FASN combined with UCP-2 could predict the risk of hypertension.
The present study may recommend the following:
• Increase public awareness about the seriousness of obesity and its related diseases.
• Applying the examined genes as biomarkers in routine clin-ical evaluations for individuals at risk of obesity may help to prevent or manage obesity and related diseases.
• Further prospective studies involving a larger population are needed to validate and expand on the findings of this study.