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Fighting Obesity: Medical College of Wisconsin Teams Up with Local Group

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A researcher taps the members of a local-based organization to learn more about the genetics of obesity.

A partnership between a Medical College of Wisconsin research team and a Milwaukee-based patient advocacy group is reporting significant results, as well, in learning more about the ties between genes and obesity.

“We’re now into the fourth and fifth generation of collection of this data, which makes it really significant in terms of the possibilities of tracing tendencies,” says Barb Cady, president of the national organization called TOPS – Take Off Pounds Sensibly – which is based in Milwaukee.

The organization and the college worked together on recent research into the genetics of obesity, which will be published in an upcoming edition of the journal, Obesity. 

Leading the research is Dr. Sherry Zhang,an instructor in the Human and Molecular Genetics Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin. She is presenting their findings at the TOPS annual meeting in Calgary, Alberta, this week.