The study revealed genetic markers of type 2 diabetes in East Asians

recently, a team of international researchers found 301 different gene signals in 183 gene locations in non-European populations linked to type 2 diabetes in East Asians. Sixty-one of them are newly discovered site associated with type 2 diabetes. Previous genome-wide association studies of people of European descent did not involve these genes. At 23:00 BST on May 6, 2020, the paper was published in Nature.
more than 100 researchers from more than 30 institutions, including the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the National University of Singapore, and the University of Tokyo, Japan, conducted this genome-wide meta-analysis of 433,540 East Asians (including 77,418 people with type 2 diabetes). The ultimate goal of these studies is to identify potential genetic targets to treat or even cure this chronic metabolic disorder, which affects more than 400 million adults worldwide.
researchers say people in different populations have most of the genetic susceptivity to type 2 diabetes, but they do have some different genetic variants that more or less affect their susceptivity.
karen Mohlke of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, who was involved in the study, said: "Without the cooperation and dedication of many scientists around the world, especially in Asia, there would not have been such a large-scale study. Data collected and analyzed by dozens of teams provides the research community with much-needed new information about the biological basis of diabetes. In
, the researchers used genome-wide association data from 23 team studies in China, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines and other countries to examine the risk of type 2 diabetes. For example, they found new diabetes risk associations near genes GDAP1, PTF1A, SIX3, ALDH2, and genes that affect muscle and fat differentiation. At another point, the researchers found two overlapping signals of the type 2 diabetes gene, which appear to work in different tissues through the NKX6-3 and ANK1 genes.
We know that diabetes is caused by a complex set of risk factors, such as body mass index, which have different effects on the development of diabetes in people of different descents," said Xueling Sim of the National University of Singapore. These findings expand the number of genetic variants associated with diabetes and emphasize the importance of studying different lineages.
researchers say understanding additional genetic variants can help identify the risk of type 2 diabetes, which gives people a better understanding of the pathophysiology of diabetes. The study may help explain why people in East Asia have a higher prevalence of type 2 diabetes than people with similar body mass index in European populations.
next step, the researchers plan to combine trans-population findings and experiment with which genes are genetically modified and how those changes lead to disease. (Source: Tang Feng, China Science Journal)
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