Association of gene variants with susceptibility to type 2 diabetes among Omanis

To investigate the association of 10 known common gene variants with susceptibility to type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D) among Omanis.

Using case-control design, a total of 992 diabetic patients and 294 normoglycemic Omani Arabs were genotyped, by an allelic discrimination assay-by-design TaqMan method on fast real time polymerase chain reaction system, for the following gene variants: KCNJ11 (rs5219), TCF7L2 (rs7903146), CDKAL1 (rs10946398), CDKN2A/B (rs10811661), FTO (rs9939609 and rs8050136), IGF2BP2 (rs4402960), SLC30A8 (rs13266634) CAPN10 (rs3792267) and HHEX (rs1111875). T2D patients were recruited from the Diabetes Clinic (n = 243) and inpatients (n = 749) at Sultan Qaboos Univesity Hospital (SQUH), Muscat, Oman. Adult control participants (n = 294) were volunteers from the community and from those visiting Family Medicine Clinic at SQU, for regular medical checkup. The difficulty in recruiting Omani participants with no family history of diabetes was the main reason behind the small number of control participants in this study. Almost all volunteers questioned had a relative with diabetes mellitus. Inspite of the small number of normoglycemic controls in this study, this sample was sufficient for detection of genes and loci for common alleles influencing T2D with an odds ratio of ≥ 1.3 reaching at least 80% power. Data was collected from June 2010 to February 2012.

Using binary logistic regression analysis, four gene variants showed significant association with T2D risk: KCNJ11 (rs5219, P = 5.8 × 10(-6), OR = 1.74), TCF7L2 (rs7903146, P = 0.001, OR = 1.46), CDKAL1 (rs10946398, P = 0.002, OR = 1.44) and CDKN2A/B (rs10811661, P = 0.020, OR = 1.40). The fixation index analysis of these four gene variants indicated significant genetic differentiation between diabetics and controls {[KCNJ11 (rs5219), P < 0.001], [TCF7L2 (rs7903146), P < 0.001], [CDKAL1 (rs10946398), P < 0.05], [CDKN2A/B (rs10811661), P < 0.05]}. The highest genotype variation % between diabetics and controls was found at KCNJ11 (2.07%) and TCF7L2 (1.62%). This study was not able to detect an association of T2D risk with gene variants of IGF2BP2 (rs4402960), SLC30A8 (rs13266634), CAPN10 (rs3792267) and HHEX (rs1111875). Moreover, no association was found between FTO gene variants (rs9939609 and rs8050136) and T2D risk. However, T2D risk was found to be significantly associated with obesity (P = 0.002, OR = 2.22); and with the Waist-to-Hip ratio (n = 532, P = 1.9 ×10(-7), OR = 2.4), [among males (n = 234, P = 1.2 × 10(-4), OR = 2.0) and females (n = 298, P = 0.001, OR = 6.3)].

Results confirmed the association of KCNJ11 (rs5219), TCF7L2 (rs7903146), CDKAL1 (rs10946398) and CDKN2A/B (rs10811661) gene variants with susceptibility to T2D among Omani Arabs.