Association studies of the anthropometric data, clinical values, genotyping and expression assays showed a decrease in the Calpain-10 mRNA and protein expression in the OW and OB groups with respect to the HW group.
Our data suggest that reduced CAPN10 expression may be a risk factor for features associated with the metabolic syndrome in obese subjects, although variation in the gene does not seem to contribute to the risk for developing obesity per se.
In light of evidence of linkage of obesity to chromosome 2q31-q37, we hypothesized that the calpain-10 gene 'high-risk' haplotype combination for non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) is involved in early onset obesity.