Framingham Heart Study RNA Sequencing in Postmortem Brain Tissue

The biology of obesity is complex, involving both environmental and genetic factors and affecting metabolic and endocrine mechanisms in tissues of the gut, adipose, and brain. This study was conducted to identify transcripts in postmortem human brain tissue associated with obesity status. We conducted both large and small RNA sequencing of hypothalamus and nucleus accumbens from postmortem brain tissue samples from Framingham Heart Study participants defined as consistently obese, consistently normal weight as controls based on longitudinal BMI measures or selected without respect to BMI and falling within neither case nor control definition.