Friday, May 27, 2011

Gene variations linked to type 2 diabetes


A new study has found that certain variations of the gene HMGA1 are associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus for individuals of white European descent.
Type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) is a common metabolic disorder that is associated with major diabetes-related complications, including retinopathy, kidney disease and cardiovascular disease.
Insulin resistance in muscle, liver, and fat tissue is a major feature of most patients with type 2 DM.
And it is considered that heredity is a major contributor to the insulin resistance of type 2 DM, according to the study.
Antonio Brunetti of the University of Catanzaro, Italy and colleagues conducted a study to examine the association of HMGA1 gene variants with type 2 DM.
The study included patients with type 2 DM and controls from 3 populations of white European ancestry in three countries Italy, U. S. and France.
The researchers found that the most frequent functional HMGA1 variant, IVS5-13insC, was present in 7 percent to 8 percent of patients with type 2 DM in all 3 populations.
The prevalence of this variant was higher among patients with type 2 DM (nearly 16 times higher odds of having this variant) than among controls in the Italian population (7.23 percent vs. 0.43 percent in one control group; and 7.23 percent vs. 3.32 percent in the other control group).
In the U. S. population, the prevalence of IVS5-13insC variant was 7.7 percent among patients with type 2 DM vs. 4.7 percent among controls; in the French population, the prevalence of this variant was 7.6 percent among patients with type 2 DM and 0 percent among controls.
In the Italian population, 3 other functional variants were observed. When all 4 variants were analyzed, HMGA1 defects were present in 9.8 percent of Italian patients with type 2 DM and 0.6 percent of controls.

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