Contribution of mitochondrial gene variants in diabetes and diabetic kidney disease

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) plays an important role in the pathogenesis of diabetes. Variants in mtDNA have been reported in diabetes, but studies on the whole mtDNA variants were limited. Our study aims to explore the association of whole mtDNA variants with diabetes and diabetic kidney disease (DKD).

The whole mitochondrial genome was screened by next-generation sequencing in cohort 1 consisting of 50 early-onset diabetes (EOD) patients with a maternally inherited diabetes (MID) family history. A total of 42 variants possibly associated with mitochondrial diseases were identified according to the filtering strategy. These variants were sequenced in cohort 2 consisting of 90 EOD patients with MID. The association between the clinical phenotype and these variants was analyzed. Then, these variants were genotyped in cohort 3 consisting of 1,571 type 2 diabetes mellitus patients and 496 subjects with normal glucose tolerance (NGT) to analyze the association between variants with diabetes and DKD.

Patients with variants in the non-coding region had a higher percentage of obesity and levels of fasting insulin (62.1% vs. 24.6%, P = 0.001; 80.0% vs. 26.5% P < 0.001). The patients with the variants in rRNA had a higher prevalence of obesity (71.4% vs. 30.3%, P = 0.007), and the patients with the variants in mitochondrial complex I had a higher percentage of the upper tertile of FINS (64.3% vs. 34.3%, P = 0.049). Among 20 homogeneous variants successfully captured, two known variants (m.A3943G, m.A10005G) associated with other mitochondrial diseases were only in the diabetic group, but not in the NGT group, which perhaps indicated its possible association with diabetes. The prevalence of DKD was significantly higher in the group with the 20 variants than those without these variants (18.7% vs. 14.6%, P = 0.049) in the participants with diabetes of cohort 3.

MtDNA variants are associated with MID and DKD, and our findings advance our understanding of mtDNA in diabetes and DKD. It will have important implications for the individual therapy of mitochondrial diabetes.