Objective: Recent genome-wide association studies have identified six novel genes for type 2 diabetes and obesity and confirmed TCF7L2 as the major type 2 diabetes gene to date in Europeans. However, the implications of these genes in Asians are unclear.
Research design and methods: We studied 13 associated single nucleotide polymorphisms from these genes in 3,041 patients with type 2 diabetes and 3,678 control subjects of Asian ancestry from Hong Kong and Korea.
Results: We confirmed the associations of TCF7L2, SLC30A8, HHEX, CDKAL1, CDKN2A/CDKN2B, IGF2BP2, and FTO with risk for type 2 diabetes, with odds ratios ranging from 1.13 to 1.35 (1.3 x 10(-12) < P(unadjusted) < 0.016). In addition, the A allele of rs8050136 at FTO was associated with increased BMI in the control subjects (P(unadjusted) = 0.008). However, we did not observe significant association of any genetic variants with surrogate measures of insulin secretion or insulin sensitivity indexes in a subset of 2,662 control subjects. Compared with subjects carrying zero, one, or two risk alleles, each additional risk allele was associated with 17% increased risk, and there was an up to 3.3-fold increased risk for type 2 diabetes in those carrying eight or more risk alleles. Despite most of the effect sizes being similar between Asians and Europeans in the meta-analyses, the ethnic differences in risk allele frequencies in most of these genes lead to variable attributable risks in these two populations.
Conclusions: Our findings support the important but differential contribution of these genetic variants to type 2 diabetes and obesity in Asians compared with Europeans.