T his issue of the Archives of Endocrinology andMetabolism encompasses three studies related to obesity. The influence of genetics on the development of metabolic obesity complications, quality of life of obese patients and bone metabolism after bariatric surgery are discussed in order to increase the knowledge of these aspects in this complex disease.The article "Prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms in obese patients candidates for bariatric surgery and its impact on health related quality of life" by Calenzani and cols. emphasizes the relationship between obesity and musculoskeletal symptoms and their influence on physical and mental aspects linked to the quality of life. In addition to the classical metabolic disorders related to obesity that abbreviate patients' lives, the physical limitation caused by arthritis and joint deformities causes impairment in mobility, increasing sedentary lifestyle, with consequent reduction in energy expenditure (1). Obese patients reported a very high frequency of pain in ankles/feet, knees and lumbar region. These symptoms impair deambulation and, thus obesity withdraws the right to come and go of these patients, determining furthermore impairment in their quality of life (1). Differently from Brilmann and cols. (2), who found a negative correlation between body mass index (BMI) and quality of life scores assessed through SF-36, Calenzani and cols. did not observed this association, that could be consequence of the relatively small and homogenously class 3 obesity sample of patients, as emphasized by the authors (1).The relationship between two main metabolic disorders, diabetes mellitus type 2 (DM2) and systemic arterial hypertension (SAH), with 12 polymorphisms in the genes encoding ghrelin (GHRL, rs26802), uncoupling protein 2 (UCP2, rs659366), uncoupling protein 3 (UCP3, rs1800849), FTO (rs9939609), leptin (LEP, rs7799039), leptin receptor (LEPR, rs1137101), and serotonin receptor (5-HT2C, rs3813929) was investigated by Schnor and cols. and is reported in the paper "Association of 5-HT2C (rs3813929) and UCP3 (rs1800849) gene polymorphisms with type 2 diabetes in obese women candidates for bariatric surgery". The study, which evaluated 351 obese women candidates for bariatric surgery, reports a 5-fold increased risk of having DM2 in T allele carriers of the rs3813929 and a 3-fold increased risk also for DM2 in CC genotype carriers of the rs1800849 (3). Analyzes of polymorphic variants can frequently lead to conflicting results, either because of the sample size or mainly because of the genetic background. The genetic influence on complex diseases is more associated with the interaction of several polymorphisms than with isolated polymorphisms. Thus, while one single published article reported a similar finding concerning the polymorphism in the UCP3 gene, studies about the polymorphism in the 5-HT2C gene present controversial results (3).