Genetics and diabetes

Abstract

Type 2 diabetes has become a major public health challenge worldwide. It is now widely accepted that genetic components affect the development of type 2 diabetes, in concert with environmental factors such as lifestyle and diet. Traditional linkage mapping, positional cloning, and candidate gene association studies have identified a few genetic variants; and genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have led to identification of more than 90 genome-wide significant susceptibility loci since 2007. Genetic variants affecting glucose homeostasis (such as fasting glucose, insulin, insulin resistance, HbA1c) showed modest overlap with type 2 diabetes loci. Most of the GWAS-identified genes are not previously considered to play roles in the pathophysiology of type 2 diabetes. Recent studies investigate causal variants and biological mechanisms responsible for the disease, and also explore potential interactions with environmental factors such as diet and lifestyle.