Human genetics of the metabolic syndrome

Genetic studies of metabolic syndrome provide a means to identify key pathways that predispose individuals to various phenotypes of the metabolic diseases and risk factors to type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Both genome wide linkage and association studies have been attempted to answer this issue. In this minireview, I will address genetic studies in Chinese in both family and population samples. The works of genome scan of were reported from the SAPPHIRe cohort as an example to address the linkage approaches to unraveling genetics of various traits composing the metabolic syndrome. In addition, some of the important biological candidate genes were also discussed. Finally, the success of finding genes through genome wide association for the metabolic syndrome remains to be explored.