No association of SUMO4 M55V with autoimmune diabetes in Asian-Indian patients

Autoimmune diabetes [type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM), latent autoimmune diabetes in adults (LADA) and part of malnutrition-related diabetes] has been shown to have genetic predisposition. Studies in IDDM 5 have lead to the discovery of a novel polymorphism 163 A-->G, of SUMO4 (small ubiquitin-related modifier) gene, associated with risk to T1DM in Asians, but not in Caucasians. We studied patients with T1DM (n = 134), patients with LADA (n = 101), patients with malnutrition-modulated diabetes mellitus (n = 66) and patients with fibrocalculous pancreatic diabetes (n = 43) and healthy controls subjects (n = 114) from Cuttack, India. Polymerase chain reaction-sequence-specific primer (PCR-SSP) was used to amplify the 163 A-->G sequences. Restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) was performed using restriction enzyme Taq I (PCR-RFLP). Differences in the allelic frequencies of the A and the G alleles were tested statistically using Fisher's exact test or chi-squared test wherever appropriate. P-values were considered significant when equal to or less than 0.05. No significant association was detected between SUMO4 M55V and T1DM susceptibility in Asian-Indians. Comparison of the A and G alleles with HLA DR3-DR4 did not result in any significant P-values. No significant association was found between SUMO4 M55V and LADA or malnutrition-related diabetes mellitus (MRDM). Our results show that Asian-Indians with T1DM are different from other Asian populations. Asian-Indians show more similarity to Caucasians with respect to the association of SUMO4 M55V variant in T1DM. Association studies on Asian-Indian patients with LADA and MRDM showed no significant difference in the presence of the A and the G alleles when compared to healthy controls.